3G roaming pact:Govt to call meeting of telcos

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To resolve the 3G roaming issue amicably, the Telecom Ministry is likely to hold a meeting with telecom operators before taking a final decision in this regard.

"We are likely to hold a discussion with various operators before the final view is taken. No date has been fixed yet. We have to check it with the Telecom Minister (Kapil Sibal)," Telecom secretary R. Chandrashekhar told reporters here.

A few days ago, chiefs of private service providers had met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to seek an early resolution to the dispute over agreement on 3G roaming services and one-time fee for additional spectrum.

Chiefs of leading telecom firms including Sunil Mittal of Bharti Airtel, Anil Ambani of RCom and Vittorio Colao of Vodafone had also met Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal to put their point of view.

The Department of Telecom (DoT) and the sector regulator Trai have termed the existing agreement among operators for offering pan-India 3G services, despite not having spectrum in all the circles, as violation of licence norms, a charge rejected by the industry.

Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea have entered into a roaming pact among themselves in circles in which they had failed to bag 3G spectrum auction held last year.

Earlier, the DoT had said in an internal note that the roaming agreement among telecom companies for 3G services would lead to a significant loss of revenue for the government.

There may also be an impact on revenues from spectrum usage charges collected from operators.