Supreme Court rejects telcos’ plea for licence extension
While telcos say not extending the licences will hit consumer interests and could affect services, SC says it did not find any merit in the plea
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the pleas of several telecom services providers seeking an automatic extension of their existing licences for 10 years. A bench of justices J. Chelameswar and R.K. Agrawal said the court did not find any merit in the pleas.
The telcos were seeking an extension based on an earlier national telecom policy, which was changed in 2012, ending automatic extension for 10 years.
Companies like Bharti Airtel Ltd, Reliance Telecom Ltd (an arm of Reliance Communications Ltd) and Vodafone India Ltd had approached the court claiming they were governed by the earlier policy as their permits were granted in 1995. The licences of these telcos started expiring in November last year for mainly metro areas. The permits will expire later this year for non-metro areas as well.
The telcos said not extending the licences will hit consumer interest and could affect services. The government countered by saying that over the 20 years since licences were granted to the companies, Bharti Airtel had earned roughly ₹ 4.6 trillion, Vodafone India ₹ 2.85 trillion, Idea Cellular Ltd ₹ 1.76 trillion and Reliance Communications ₹ 1.4 trillion.
The case finds its origins in the 2 February 2012 Supreme Court verdict that found fault with the procedure followed by the government in allocating spectrum bundled with the telecom licences in 2008.
The court had, at that time, cancelled 122 licences awarded to 19 companies. The government then decided to auction all spectrum.
An expert agreed that winning the pleas would’ve been unexpected. “But victory would more than justify the cost if they had won," said Mahesh Uppal, telecom regulatory expert and director of Com First India Pvt. Ltd, a consulting firm.
The telcos had approached the courts prior to the earlier auction, held in February 2014, against the change in licensing norms for the metro areas. That case too was dismissed by the courts.
The government has since held four auctions for radio spectrum. It has earned almost ₹ 2 trillion from the winning bidders.
Vodafone, Reliance Communications and Idea Cellular declined to comment. Bharti Airtel did not respond to emails.
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