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TRAI action likely against mobile service providers

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CIOL Bureau
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NEW DELHI: A day after the expiry of the deadline for replying to the show cause issued by The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to the mobile service providers on violating network congestion norms, the regulator is set to decide on the next course of action on Monday.

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This follows the service providers' failure to respond to the show cause notice.

The regulator had issued show cause to Bharti Televentures, Reliance Infocomm, Reliance Telecom, Spice Communications, Tata Teleservices and BPL Mobile Cellular on March 6 and had set March 17 as the deadline for replying to the same.

TRAI officials said that the service providers failed to reply within the deadline on the show cause. The official said that they have received letters from Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and Association of Unified Service Providers of India (AUSPI).

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“We have received letters from these two cellular associations but have not received any letters from the individual service providers on it,” an official said.

TRAI chairman Pradip Baijal, slated to retire on March 22, could not be contacted for comment.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) is yet to finalize the candidate for the post. But according to DoT official sources former secretary, department of telecom, Nripendra Misra is tipped to be the next chief of TRAI.

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Responding to COAI allegation that the regulator had not done enough to push for interconnection with BSNL and prevent network congestion, the regulator clarified that “to ensure efficient and timely interconnection amongst various service providers, TRAI had issued various directive and regulations.”

TRAI also pointed out that Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) had in 2004 held that the regulator had no adjudicatory powers to intervene when there is dispute between two service providers.

“Keeping the above legal position in view, it was expected that due to very high growth in mobile subscribers the operators should have negotiated shorter time frame than specified in interconnect agreement and obtained inter-connections expeditiously, failing which mobile operators were free to take legal action to settle disputes,” TRAI said.

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