By IANS
New Delhi : Idea Cellular Ltd, a leading telecom firm, Tuesday criticised the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) once again for not allocating radio frequencies or spectrum according to seniority.
In its letter addressed to Siddhartha Behura, secretary of DoT and chairman of Telecom Commission, Idea cited an order by the Delhi High Court that had asked DoT to “take into account the seniority of the petitioner in respect of the application dated 24.08.2007, for grant of UAS (unified access service) license.”
“It is now nearing 20 months since we applied, and six weeks since we deposited Rs.684.59 crore (Rs.6.84 billion) as license entry Fee. You are aware that our applications were made not just prior to 24.08.2007, but they rank No.1 in seniority among all those holding letters of intent/in-principle approvals issued after 26.06.2006 (the date of our applications),” Sanjeev Aga, managing director of Idea, said in the letter.
“We aver that the principle set out by the Hon’ble Delhi High Court is equally applicable to us, and requires that the DoT shall not allocate initial GSM (global system for mobile communications) spectrum to applications made after 26.06.2006, before first allocating the same to us in each of the nine service areas,” he added in the letter.
The Aditya Birla Group-promoted telecom firm had applied for licenses and received letters of intent for rolling out its services under the GSM technology in the nine circles of Tamil Nadu (including Chennai), Karnataka, Punjab, Orissa, West Bengal, Kolkata, Assam, the northeast and Jammu and Kashmir.