TRAI proposes 3 levels of unified telecom license

Excerpts from What's Hot on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show »

Telecom regulator TRAI has started the process to put together new licensing norms and has put out proposals including three levels of unified licenses, reports CNBC-TV18's economic policy editor Siddharth Zarabi.

The deadline for the end of these consultations is this month end and the TRAI will therefore work fast to put out the formal guidelines. What currently exists is something called a Unified Access Service License (UASL) in which there are separate long-distance providers and international long-distance internet service provider licenses.

What the TRAI is now proposing to do is to unify all of this into one new license. It will be called a unified license, but it will operate at three levels. There will be a national level, there will be a service area level and there will of course also be a district level license. This allows some operators or certain applicants who do not want to take on the cost and burden of doing nationwide operations to focus on specific districts.

The idea really at some stage is to ensure that underserved districts get adequate attention because a company that takes a district level license will obviously focus on it. This whole process will allow the existing license holders a seamless migration to the new regime. For instance, Bharti Airtel or Vodafone which has an existing nationwide UASL will automatically migrate to a national level unified license spectrum in the new regime. So these companies will carry forward.

New operators will have an entry fee and there will be a rebate for existing operators. The idea at this stage is to allow for three separate licenses to operate because that will also reduce the burden in terms of spectrum demand. There are districts where there is a lot of spectrum available but the existing operators haven't reached. So I would say at this stage by May you probably will see the final set of guidelines coming in and a new telecom licensing framework hopefully coming into effect by mid 2012.

Watch the accompanying video for more details..