DoT renews Unified Telecom License

Complying to the industry demand, The Department of Telecom has comeforth to re-amend the unified telecom licence inorder to do away with the clause which the operators claimed mandated "force migration" to the so called new regime.

The initial unified license commissioned the operators to migrate all their licenses to the new regime on its expiry in any of their circles.

However, the commission has done away with its clause which read, "In order to ensure that the UL Regime covers all existing Licenses, a migration path is offered to UL regime. Licenses of any of the existing Telecom Services Provider shall be eligible to migratae to UL with any number of additional services, however, the Telecom Service Provider has to migrate all of its existing licenses."

The re-newed amended clause now states. The amended clause now reads: "In order to ensure that the UL (unified licence) regime covers all existing licences, a migration path if offered to the existing licences to migrate to UL regime. Licences of any of the existing Telecom Services Provider shall be eligible to migrate to UL with any number of additional services."

Meanwhile, on migrating to the new regime, any Telecom Service Provider is required to pay one time non-refundable entry fee of Rs 15 crore for obtaining new licences to provide all kinds of telecom services.
Besides that, an operators are required to provide performance bank guarantee of Rs 220 crore and financial bank guarantee of Rs 44 crore.