Noted banker Deepak Parekh has favoured a lower revenue share by cellular operators in order to allow full mobility to the wireless in local loop operators.

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In his presentation to the group of ministers on telecom recently, Parekh made a case for allowing basic operators, offering WLL services, to provide unlimited mobility, saying it was congruent with the fact of convergence and enhanced competition for the benefit of consumers.

"Allow cellular operators to pay lower revenue share as this will have no adverse impact on cost to consumers and hence will not affect the teledensity goals," Parekh said.

On "fair compensation" to cellular operators, he also proposed "difference of the amount paid by the fourth cellular operator through competitive bidding and the entry fee for the basic service licence."

According to Parekh, eventually there should be lower revenue share for all players.

Going a step ahead on the unified licencing, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India stated that the ultimate objective was to do away with licensing regime within a year, and bring in "automatic licensing and authorisation to any operator without any permission but subject to the operators notifying the regulatory authority and complying with published guidelines for such services."

The existing operators should have the option to either continue with the existing licensing regime or move to new unified regime complying with the notified guidelines, Trai chairman Pradip Baijal said in his presentation to the GoM.

Trai said the service area in the unified licensing regime would be same as the service area of the present cellular operators.

According to the presentation, three metros -- Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai -- which are at present part of Maharashtra, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, respectively would be separate service areas as in the case of existing cellular mobile services.

Delhi service area would include Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida and Ghaziabad, it said.

Trai has proposed that the entry fee paid by the fourth cellular operator should be considered the entry fee in the new unified services regime.

"The roll out obligations and the performance bank guarantees will also be as per fourth cell operators," it said.

In services areas such as Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal and Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Assam, where there is no fourth operator, no extra entry fee would be charged from the existing players for migration to the proposed regime.

Trai said the existing licence fee for cellular operators which ranges between eight to 12 per cent depending on the circle of operation, should be the licence fee in the unified licensing regime.