Vodafone moves Delhi HC over licence renewal issue
Vodafone now seeks court intervention over the issue of licence renewal in three circles.
As expected, Vodafone has moved the Delhi High Court challenging the Department of Telecommunications’ (DoT) decision not to extend its licences for Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata circles.
“DoT arbitrarily rejected the applications without due consideration of the substantive points raised. Accordingly, Vodafone is constrained to take legal recourse…as this can cause grave inconvenience to millions of customers in these three circles,” the company said in a statement.
“Vodafone believes it has the right to extension as both, applicable policy (National Telecom Policy ‘99) and licence, provide for extension and continuity…The 900 MHz and 1,800 MHz spectrum allocated to Vodafone is embedded in the licence and extension necessarily means the extension of embedded spectrum,” the company added.
Back in April, the telecom department had declined to extend Vodafone’s licence in these circles, which are due for renewal from November 2014. The operator, which boasts of 25.6 million customers in these three circles, had bagged the licence in 1994, with a 20 year-validity.
Following the Supreme Court decision to cancel 122 teleocm licences, the government has been looking re-auction licences and spectrum. However, Vodafone has opposed the decision to re-auction the spectrum, citing Clause 4.1 of the licence agreement under which the government can extend licence tenure for another 10 years if the operator makes request during the 19th year of the licence term.
Source: ET