Telecom honchos take battle against TRAI

Rankled by TRAI's recommendations for 2G spectrum auctions, telecom companies on Wednesday made a joint pitch to top government functionaries, including Home Minister P Chidambaram and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, for not accepting the "catastrophic" recipe of the industry watchdog.

Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Mittal, Vodafone Chief Executive Vittorio Colao, Idea Cellular Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla and Telenor CEO Jon Fredrik Baksaas first made their case with Chidambram and Mukhejree and then followed it up with meetings with Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal.

They also met Pulok Chatterji, Principal Secretary in the Prime Ministers Office and possibly also Commerce Minister Anand Sharma besides a host of top bureaucrats, including secretaries to the department of telecom and commerce.

"This has been the most destructive period of regulatory environment I have seen in 16 years," Mittal said saying Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) recommendations will be "catastrophic" for the entire telecom sector.

Baksaas said the auction policy should be catalyst for "affordability, competition and investments" rather than leading to tariff hikes as would be case with TRAI setting a very high base price for the auction.

"If the decision are taken in interest of the industry, they (TRAI recommendations) have to be changed. I think the current recommendations will kill the industry," Birla said.

TRAI has suggested a base price of Rs 3,622 crore for one megahertz (MHz) for pan-India spectrum, which is around 10 times higher than the price at which 2G licenses bundled with 4.4 MHz spectrum were allocated in 2008 under the then Telecom Minister A Raja.