New Delhi
Telecom Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Tuesday met senior officials from the industry including Bharti Airtel , Reliance Jio and Vodafone-Idea wherein several issues like the latest decision of Supreme Court on adjusted gross revenue (AGR) were discussed.
Sources close to the meeting told businessline that the telecom operators raised the issue of AGR, while Scindia told them to take up quality of services (QoS) on a high priority basis, and restrict unsolicited (pesky) calls/ SMSes.
They also expressed concerns over the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) excluding messaging and calling apps like WhatsApp and Telegram in its recommendation on new licencing rules. For a long time, the operators have been demanding to bring such over-the-top (OTT) players, under the ambit of telecom licences as they provide calling and messaging services like any telecom operator.
“The operators expressed concerns over the exclusion of OTT (over-the-top) apps by TRAI in its recommendations on Service Authorisation. Representatives from Bharti (Airtel) and Vodafone-Idea (Vi) raised the issue of AGR,” a source privy of the meeting said.
‘Productive session’
“Chaired a productive meeting with the Stakeholder Advisory Committee of the Telecommunication Service Providers (TSPs). Together, we discussed key issues related to enhancing customer satisfaction, streamlining processes and improving quality of service, thus ensuring connectivity, accessibility and affordability for all,” the Minister said on X.
The meeting was attended by Akash Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Jio; Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman, Aditya Birla Group; Rajan Mittal, Vice-Chairman of Bharti Enterprises; Akshaya Moondra, CEO, Vi; Gopal Vittal, CEO, Airtel; and Pankaj Pawar, MD, Jio.
The source added that Vi officials shared its concern on the impact of AGR on the health of the telecom sector, which was supported by Airtel officials.
On Monday, Vi CEO Moondra told analysts that the company has begun a fresh dialogue with the government to resolve the AGR dues issues, but also added that long-term business plans and revival strategy of the debt-ridden company remains unaffected.
The SC last week, had dismissed curative petitions filed by telecom service providers, including Airtel and VIL, against the court’s October 2019 judgment upholding the Department of Telecom’s (DoT) move to recover AGR of around ₹92,000 crore from them.
Scindia on Monday had told mediapersons that at this point in time, whatever the Supreme Court has ordained, according to that the process has to be executed. “We are still going through the process of examining that and see what the repercussion of that is going to be,” he had said while sharing the achievements in the first 100 days of the third term of the NDA government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.