Telecom operators body COAI has criticized the government for favoring Reliance Industries by allowing 4G operators with ISP licences to offer voice services. They can do so after paying Rs 1,650 crore to the government.

Currently 4G operators can only offer non-voice services. The decision will now be approved by the telecom mister. 4G is a successor to the 3G and 2G families and is expected to be five times quicker than the 3G services in the country.

In letter to the Telecom Secretary R Chandrashekhar. COAI Director General Rajan Mathews said that the industry body is greatly concerned and distressed by the unfolding of events on the attempts on the part of DoT to give undue benefits to a set of private parties, in this case RIL under the pretext of migration of Unified Licence.

COAI said that the choice of using BWA spectrum under a given licence was to be exercised by an operator at the time of participation in auctions in 2010.

"By proposing a change now, the DoT is proposing policy changes in order to selectively favour and benefit a specific operator," it added.

It said that any effort to retrospectively review the same to grant an enhancement in the scope of service will be illegal as the conditions of auction are legally binding," COAI said.

Voice accounts for almost 85 percent of Indian carriers' revenues while with data is yet hold the hold the proper space. Data services contribute just about 5-6 percent of the total mobile services revenues as fewer people browse the Internet on phones.
 
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