By IANS
New Delhi : A day after the roundtable meeting with India’s telecom operators failed over the spectrum issue, Communications and IT Minister A. Raja Tuesday said he will meet them separately to find a solution to the imbroglio.
“The interaction is going on. After the meeting is done with the secretary (of Department of Telecommunications), we will meet the operators, if necessary,” Raja said on the sidelines of an event here.
He, however, gave no time frame as to when this raging issue, which has divided the mobile phone services operators into two groups – those with CDMA technology and the others offering GSM services – will be resolved.
The minister refused to comment on the fact that Reliance Communications’ Anil Ambani has written a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh requesting him to intervene in the ongoing matter.
Meanwhile, the Telecommunications Engineering Centre – the technical arm of the DoT, which oversees the civilian application of the frequency spectrum – is also expected to give its report on the matter by the end of this month.
The report will be largely based on the present recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority over the allocation of spectrum – a matter which is also sub-judice with the appellate body of the telecom industry.
On the issue of implementing number portability, which allows a user to shift operators without changing the phone number, Raja said the process was on.
The feature would be introduced in the four leading metros of Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata by the end of this year, the minister said.