Modi speaks to Italian PM Georgia Meloni, thanks her for Italy G7 Summit invitation
The G7 Summit is scheduled to be held in Italy from June 13-15.
STATESMAN NEWS SERVICE
New Delhi, 10 July:
In a move to firm up the telecom sector, the government plans to announce the long awaited mergers and acquisitions guidelines by the end of this month.
“I am sure that before 31 July that policy will be in place, the guidelines for mergers and acquisitions,” the law and telecom minister, Mr Kapil Sibal, said on the sidelines of Assocham’s roundtable on legal system.
The Indian telecom sector has at present around 13 mobile phone service providers with some of them expected to go for consolidation once the final guidelines are in place.
“Telecom operators are talking to each other. There are three Indian service providers that are looking for significant stake sale but waiting for clear guidelines,” said an executive of a telecom company.
Though the telecom ministry had announced broad guidelines for mergers and acquisitions in February last year, detailed guidelines are yet to be spelt out.
The guidelines that have been cleared in principle include expeditious approval to merger proposals of telecom companies if their combined market share is up to 35 per cent.
It will seek sector regulator Trai’s recommendation in case the resultant entity has a market share between 35 and 60 per cent.
The government has de-linked spectrum from new licences and both have to be procured by companies separately.
Consequent upon the merger of licences, the total spectrum held by the resultant entity should not exceed 25 per cent of the spectrum assigned, by way of auction or otherwise, to it in the concerned service area in case of GSM spectrum services which include 900 and 1800 megahertz (MHz) bands frequencies.
In respect of 800 MHz band (CDMA), the in-principle approved guidelines state that the ceiling will be 10 MHz and for other spectrum bands, relevant conditions pertaining to auction of that spectrum will apply.
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