COAI, the lobby of GSM operators, has asked the telecom department not to issue exclusive series to Reliance Jio and restrict it to 10 lakh per circle as per the DoT norms for new entrant
Cellular Operators Association (COAI)—the lobby of GSM operators—on Thursday has asked the Department of Telecom (DoT) to allocate only 10 lakh numbers without any exclusive series to Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJIL), the new entrant in telecom space.
COAI, in a letter sent to DoT secretary MF Farooqui, said, "“We submit that there is an existing guideline set by DoT for allocation of numbers... When a service provider starts the services, they are allocated one million numbers in each circle of operation."
The Reliance group company has reportedly demanded four crore numbers for starting its telecom services in the country.
“We submit that in the current scenario of multiple operators and explosive subscriber growth, considering the constraints in the numbering resources there is a great need to see that all the levels are utilised efficiently and there is no wastage of the important resource,” COAI said.
According to COAI, existing guideline should be applicable for all the service providers and this should continue to be applicable to any new licensees. RJIL should not be allocated exclusive numbering series in order to maintain a level playing field, it said.
Last month, Reliance Jio Infocomm has got a unified telecom licence that will enable it to offer voice telephony and high speed data services across the country. The Reliance group unit is the only operator that holds a pan-India spectrum for 4G services.
"With grant of unified license, RJIL has migrated its existing ISP license along with broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum to the unified license with authorisation for all services, except global mobile personal communication by satellite service (GMPCS) under unified license in all service areas," RJIL had said in a release in October 2013.
The company has shown its intention to provide phone call services using radiowaves it has and is testing the technology for the same.
The industry body said any changes will be against the level playing field as all the other service providers are following the existing rules set by DoT. “Hence, Reliance Jio Infocomm should be allocated only one million numbers per circle of their operations,” COAI added.
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