The department of telecom, government of India has issued another 7 show-cause notices to telecom operators asking why their licenses should not be canceled.
However, unlike the 69 such notices issued four months ago, the new notices have been issued for complete failure to meet the norms requiring operators to start operations in time.
The 69 notices issued earlier were addressed only to the clutch of new operators brought in to the market by A Raja and asked why their licenses may not be canceled as they had misrepresented vital details about the companies at the time of license allotment.
The new show cause notices, on the other hand, are for failing to meet roll-out obligations, DoT secretary R Chandrasekhar said. He also said another 9 operators will get such notices in the next two weeks.
The move to threaten the operators with license cancellation is a break from the earlier notices as operators were allowed to settle by paying penalty for failing to meet roll-out obligations.
Over the last four months, the DoT has collected nearly Rs 300 crore from tens of operators as fine for failing to start and expand their services in time.
Unlike operators like Videocon and Uninor, some of the new operators haven’t even started operations in even one third of their circles. Some of them show few tens of subscribers, three years after getting their licenses.
Chandrasekhar said no decision has been taken on whether or not to cancel the licenses of those who misrepresented their company’s vital statistics such as ownership details when applying for license in late 2007.
“We are studying their replies.. All of them have replied.. A decision will be taken in two weeks,” he said.
Chandrasekhar did not specify which operators have got the new cancellation licenses, or whether they were issued after the ministry was dissatisfied by their replies to the first round of show-cause notices on why they failed to roll out their service in time.