New telecom policy gets rid of roaming charges

NEW DELHI: Soon, you will not have to pay roaming charges for making calls on your cell phone while traveling within the country. Not just that, you will also be able to retain your number even if you move city.

The Union Cabinet set the stage for the drastic change in India's telecom story by approving a National Telecom Policy which also seeks to put an end to your frustration with slow speed of Internet surfing.

The policy was approved after telecom minister Kapil Sibal agreed to drop certain issues from his draft, which were seen to be controversial. To begin with, anxious to prevent a repeat of the situation where former telecom minister A Raja allegedly rigged spectrum prices to favour a select group of businessmen, the Cabinet decided to vest the power to price spectrum in a ministerial panel, rather than just the minister.

The Cabinet also felt that revenue generation could not be excluded as a goal, borrowing the politically safe formulation of "affordability" from the New Telecom Policy, 1999.

Deputy chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia had objected to the proposal to confer pricing power on the telecom minister of the day. The meeting saw him getting support from many of the attendees: home minister P Chidambaram, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, commerce minister Anand Sharma, heavy industries minister Praful Patel and highways minister C P Joshi.

The affordability argument can provide comfort to telecom operators who have launched a high decibel campaign against the regulator's prescription for a 10-fold increase in the reserve price for spectrum auction. However, government has virtually ruled out a rethink on the second suggestion of refarming of spectrum. The regulator has proposed that GSM operators switch from 900 Mhz band to 1800 Mhz at market determined rates, something that is being opposed to by the industry on the grounds that it will cost them nearly Rs 1.5 lakh crore.

On giving more powers to Trai: another issue which saw an animated debate in the Cabinet, the ministers were unanimous that policy making function would remain with government and not the sectoral regulator. "We just want to add that policy making function would, however, continue to remain with government, means Trai will not make policy," Sibal said.

This apart, there were at least two other modifications with the telecom department dropping proposals to enact a separate law for spectrum management and to set up a finance firm for the sector.

Another 2G fallout was the government's decision to separate telecom licences and spectrum, against the earlier practice of bundling them, and charge a market-derived price for the airwaves.

While the policy to turn India into one telecom circle for roaming purposes was cleared by the Cabinet, it will take a while before you stop paying for taking calls in another state as the telecom department is yet to work out the modalities. Once implemented, telecom companies may recover a part of the lost revenue by jacking up local call tariffs, analysts said.

"The target is one nation full mobile number portability and working towards one nation free roaming," Sibal said.