India’s telecoms regulator has ordered two mobile networks, Etisalat DB and STel to restart their mothballed networks within three days.
The two companies lost their licenses when the Supreme Court cancelled the 2008 GSM license allocation, and announced that they would close their services as a result.
However, the TRAI has told them to keep their networks active until the formal cancellation is signed by the government, which hasn’t happened yet.
The regulator is arguing that the networks are still bound by their network quality of service standards until the licenses are formally cancelled, and as such the companies have to keep their services working.
The networks are not impressed and want clarity on why they should keep networks running when the service is to be closed anyway.
“On the one hand we have been told by the Supreme Court that our licences are being cancelled and on the other the regulator wants us to continue services. We are caught in between,” one unnamed operator told the BusinessLine newspaper.