Telecom mergers and acquisition policy likely by Oct 15

The long-awaited merger and acquisition policy for telecom companies is expected to be in place by October 15, Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said.

Telecom operators have been waiting for long to see the final guidelines of merger and acquisition (M&A).

The Department of Telecom has plans to meet industry before releasing the final guidelines.

The department had also scheduled a meeting early this week but for some unknown reasons it was deferred.

Talking about his immediate priorities at Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Sibal said that his top priority is getting Post Banks started in rural area.

The Minister said that his second priority is to ensure that “next auction is not just successful but phenomenally successful“.

For the financial year 2013-14, government expects revenue of Rs 40,847.05 crore from other communication services, which include receipt from spectrum sale and one-time spectrum fee levied on old players for holding airwaves frequencies in addition to quantum they were allocated with licences.

Sibal said that his ministry is working on a policy framework for Optical fibre network under which government plans to connect 2.5 lakh village panchayats in the country.

He said that his third priority “is to move the fibre optics policy framework as quickly as possible so that we can 2.5 lakh villages by 2014 and also connect 600 universities and 3,500 colleges with dedicated national knowledge network, That process is on but I want that to be completed by 2014.”

Source: http://cablequest.org/news/telecom-news/item/3254-telecom-mergers-and-acquisition-policy-likely-by-oct-15.htmlSource: http://cablequest.org/news/telecom-news/item/3254-telecom-mergers-and-acquisition-policy-likely-by-oct-15.html