Foresee local calls at 10p/min, STD at 25p/min: A Raja

Q: Let me begin by asking you, you have been a minister who took the gauntlet of introducing more competition. But that has been accompanied by a lot of controversy. How do you feel about it? Do you feel rewarded or do you feel pain for your efforts?

A: This is not a question of whether it is painful or rewarded. I do feel that I did my job according to my conscience and according to law established in this department. When I assumed charge as telecom minister, my categorical assurance that was given to the people at large, even in the parliament as well, is that I will brief parliament according to the TRAI recommendations. Ultimately, it will give the new reduction of tariff and the rural tele-density will go off. You see within three years or two years, from 2007 itself, you see the tangible reduction of tariff and how the rural tele-density is coming up. Of course within two years, the rural tele-density you cannot imagine that there will be such tremendous growth, the tariff will come down. As I promised earlier in the local call, within a circle or within a state, the local call will be 10 paise and the whole India call will be for 0.25 paise.

Q: You mentioned the TRAI recommendations. There are two issues that are consistently thrown at the department. One is that you introduced something called first come first serve, which was wrong, according to your detractors. They also say that you had a deadline of October 1 for application and it was suddenly advanced by five days. Then they also say that you cherry pick, the department cherry picked from TRAI recommendations. What do you have to say to that?

A: No. I am speaking broadly. The recommendations are many more. Some of the recommendations need to be consulted with the industry and other stakeholders. You cannot say that whatever recommendations given by TRAI can be implemented at once. But some of the recommendations may need urgency to be implemented. Accordingly, some of the recommendations may be put into controversy. Maybe a few recommendations are still pending where industries are not accepting it. Most probably I can share with you that termination of access deficit charges. When a call is made through an operator and the call is being terminated by another operator, the operator is being paid to terminate the charge. I think that this has to be revisited. But when you are revisiting the thing, then controversy definitely comes in because someone's interest is going to be put at stake. So in such cases, the industry should not be divided. Ultimately, there should not be any strike or unrest in the industry. When there is unrest in industry you cannot have growth. So, by forcing all these things, one or two recommendations are still being debated in the ministry. That is different. That does not mean ministry or minister is doing cherry-picking. That is not correct. So far as the new operators and competition is concerned.

Q: Is it first come first serve?

A: I will come to that later. I cleared it in the parliament as well. What recommendation says is no capping. They didn't tell how many operators, how to be allotted and at that time neither the ministry nor the minister nor TRAI knew what type of competitive applications will be filed to this much. One thing I must share with you, why DoT has chosen after consultation with the Solicitor General of India, who represented the cases before the TDSAT and High Court of Delhi at the time, they accepted on 25 September, the department. Of course it came to me and later I endorsed it. The reason behind this is, these are all the applications originally pending with the industry notwithstanding the recommendations made by the TRAI. One step I can go further and say on record is that the recommendation itself was sought on the basis of the pending applications and not on the basis of new applicants. So when I discussed with the officers, they accepted the idea and thereafter I referred the matter to the solicitor general. I consulted with the highest Law officer in the country also, and he said it's a reasonable classification because you cannot process the 500-600 applications. Again about the first come first serve policy, it is not invented or introduced by me. It was inherited in the year 1994 from the old license condition. When we migrated to the unified license conditions and it was inherited by the old conditions by the then minister. Right from the Arun Shourie period, he was one of the ministers who permitted some files on the basis of the first come first serve policy. As a matter of surprise, I found some of the files negative since it was not in order as per the first come first serve policy. So, commission and omission both have been recorded on the file that the file is being approved on the basis of the first come first service policy and the other file is being negative, since it has not followed the first come first serve policy.