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New
Delhi: The telecom committee
constituted by the Communications Minister, Mr Arun Shourie,
to solve the contentious issues between the cellular and
limited mobility operators, has decided to seek an adjournment
of the cases that are coming up for hearing by the Telecom
Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) on Monday.
Briefing the media
after the second round of meeting held today, the Telecom
Secretary, Mr Vinod Vaish, noted that while "some"
consensus has been reached on a few issues, the committee
would be meeting again on March 3 to deliberate further.
Mr Shourie had
set a deadline of March 1, for the committee to finalise
its report, however, it has had to be postponed by two
days because of pending assignments of a few members,
he said.
While declining
to state whether there will be more meetings scheduled
after March 3, Mr Vaish noted that it might take a little
more time because all the members have agreed that long-term
solutions need to be arrived at if the telecom sector
has to move forward.
The committee has
on its agenda three main items, which include the provision
of "roaming" by limited mobility operators,
restricting the service to the short distance charging
area (SDCA) and provisions for protecting the smaller
operators.
The
two-hour meeting was attended by Mr Mukesh Ambani, CMD,
Reliance, Mr Rajan Mittal, JMD, Bharti, Mr S. Ramakrishnan,
MD, Tata Teleservices, Mr Ashim Ghosh, CEO, Hutch, Mr
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Chairman, BPL Mobile, and Mr Prithipal
Singh, CMD, BSNL.
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