Trai announces revenue sharing at 17 per cent for cellular operators
New Delhi: As part of the agreement between the government and the cellular operators in the country, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has finally worked out the revenue-sharing formula between cellular operators and the Department of Telecommunications.

In a recent announcement made by the Trai, it has recommended that mobile phone service providers pay 17 per cent of their annual revenue to DoT as licence fee. The recommended percentage is more than what the operators wanted to pay but less than what DoT wanted. The percentage of sharing for Jammu and Kashmir and the Andaman and Nicobar islands have been fixed at 10 per cent.

While stating that the revenue sharing should have been closer to 10 per cent, industry sources said that the cellular industry would accept the Trai verdict. Even the DoT, which was expecting a 20 per cent share, is stated to be ready to accept the Trai verdict.

The revenue sharing mechanism was introduced by the government last year, as a means of breaking the impasse on the seemingly impossible situation of having to pay huge fixed licence fees, which the cellular operators had bid for.

TRAI has also recommended that the fourth operator in a circle should be selected through a bidding process. There are already two operators in each circle and the department of telecom services and MTNL would be the third.
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IndusInd Bank and Centurion said to be in merger talks
Mumbai: In a report appering in the Financial Express, the Hinduja-controlled, Indusind Bank, is said to be merger talks with Centurion Bank.

While Indusind promoter, Mr. Ashok Hinduja, confirmed that the bank was in talks with several other players for possible mergers, he refused to comment on the Centurion deal.

According to industry experts Centurion Bank has been on the lookout for merger with another bank for some time now. The bank is also said to have approached a few merchant bankers for initiating talks with possible suitors.

This is the second time that Centurion Bank is holding merger talks with another bank. The new-generation private-sector bank had in December last year initiated a dialogue with ICICI Bank for a possible merger. However, after negotiations that ran over a month, ICICI Bank shelved the plan to take over Centurion following differences between the two over the swap ratio.
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