The government on Wednesday cleared a fresh Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion) financial package for the crisis-ridden paging industry, amid the ongoing general elections, after getting clearance from the Election Commission.
"We have cleared the package on the lines of a decision taken by the Union Cabinet in January 2003," Telecom Secretary Nripendra Mishra told PTI.
Confirming that a communication was being sent to the service providers in the sector, he said the ministry had taken prior permission from the Election Commission before clearing and communicating the decision.
Service providers, however, termed the package inadequate saying a lot needed to be done to salvage the sector which was reeling under the onslaught of the mobile phone services.
As per the financial package, the Department of Telecom has offered that the city-based licencees would be shifted to revenue sharing regime from fixed licence system with effect from the third year of payment, while the circle-based operators can shift from the second year onwards.
"This is absolute discrimination against the city-based operators. Moreover, most of the circle-based operators have closed their operations," Pravin Kumar, managing director of
Sanjay Dalmia's DSS Mobile Communications, said.
As part of the package, the operators would be liable to pay just 5 per cent of their total revenues to the government as licence fee.
Kumar said of the total financial relief offered by the government, nearly 80 per cent would accrue to the circle-based operators who have already stopped operations, leaving just 20 per cent for the city-based service providers who were still offering the paging services.
He demanded that the industry should be compensated on the lines of GSM cellular operators after the unified licence regime was implemented where telecom operators were given relief by way of reduction in the revenue share.
The DoT has given a 14-day period to the paging industry to accept the new package and settle the dues.
In December last year, the paging industry had approached the Telecom Dispute Settlement and Appellate Tribunal seeking compensation on the ground that cellular operators were "killing" them by offering SMS facility, which they claimed was their exclusive domain.
Terming the SMS facility on cellphones as nothing but a paging service, Kumar said: "We should be compensated as we have suffered due to GSM operators being allowed to offer SMS service for which they do not have the licence."
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