TRAI wants 69 telecom licenses cancelled

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said on Thursday that five new companies, who were given 2G licenses by Raja, should be forced to surrender 69 licenses.

According to TRAI, the companies haven’t rolled out their phone services according to the given timeline.

A report by the government’s auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had declared that Raja broke the rules and ignored the advice of the Prime Minister to give licenses at inexplicably cheap prices to companies who should have been declared ineligible.

Of the 69 licenses that TRAI wants cancelled, more than half did not meet any part of their rollout obligations. The others have delivered only some of the services they were meant to.

Cancellation has been recommended for licence in 15 circles given to Etisalat, a company earlier known as Swan that CAG had dubbed as a front company of Anil Ambani group.

Licences to Unitech group’s Uninor in eight circles, 10 to Sistema-Shyam, a joint venture between Russia’s Sistema and India’s Shyam group, 10 to Videocon, which the Venugopal Dhoot-led group acquired from Mahendra Nahta’s Datacom, and 19 of Loop have also been asked to be cancelled.

The TRAI scanner, however, did not find any faults with the Anil Ambani Group and the Tata Group, which together got spectrum allocation for around 35 licence areas at the same time.