KATHMANDU, JUN 13 -Complaining about the regulator’s “biased treatment”, STM Telecom filed a case in the Supreme Court on Wednesday. STM is one of the three companies that had applied for a unified license to Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) along with Smart Telecom and United Telecom Limited (UTL), but was not granted the licence.
The NTA had refused to issue the licence to STM, citing its failure to meet government-set criteria. The regulator, however, had decided to award the licence to rest of the two operators.
“We had no other option but to move the court after the NTA failed to treat us equally,” said Ashish Sharma, general manager of Chaudhary Group, which owns 80 percent in STM Telecom. He added STM had completed expanding telecom services in the Eastern Development Region as per the condition in the existing licence.
While deciding to grant the licence to UTL and Smart Telecom two months ago, NTA had asked STM to first fulfil the requirements as provisioned in the Nepal Gazette.
The government introduced the provision of unified licence last year with a view to provide a level playing field to all six telecom companies. The licence holders are allowed to operate multiple telecom services, including the GSM mobile service, which is currently being provided by Ncell and Nepal Telecom only.
Smart Telecom acquired the licence immediately after the NTA decision, but UTL has not been able to obtain it, with two supplementary writs filed against the unified licence provision and the government’s decision to issue the licence.
It has also been revealed that the NTA board decided to issue licence to Smart Telecom and UTL “flouting rules set in the gazette”.
Four petitions seeking an annulment of the unified licence, two cases arguing that the NTA’s current board is not legally empowered to make policy decisions, and one case regarding the legitimacy of the new spectrum policy are currently under consideration of the SC and awaiting final verdict.
With the unified licence landing in controversy, the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) has also started an internal investigation, according to an NTA source. “NTA has sent the relevant documents to the CIAA last week,” the source said.
STM Telecom, in its writ, has also raised the issue of frequency. A company source said the NTA decided to provide 5 MHz spectrum in the 900 MHz band to Smart Telecom and UTL each, leaving no frequency available for STM.
“The regulator assured us to provide spectrum in 1800 MHz band in future after receiving the licence, but the band is considered expensive for service roll out,” the source said.
No comments:
Post a Comment