Finance Ministry will decide on BSNL divestment (India)

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The Union Ministry of Communications and IT has left it to the Finance Ministry to decide the appropriate time for divesting 10 per cent equity in Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.

Delivering the keynote address at the fifth Assocham Global Telecom Summit here, Mr. Siddharth Behura, Secretary, Department of Telecom, said, As far as the issue of BSNL disinvestment is concerned, the ball is in the court of the Finance Ministry which will decide the time and issue price as the necessary consultations between the Ministry of Communications & IT and the Finance Ministry have been concluded and it is left to the latter to launch BSNL disinvestment at a conducive time.”

However, the BSNL employees union has strongly opposed divestment on the grounds that it will not benefit the company in any way. BSNL’s profits dipped drastically last year to just over Rs 100 crore from over Rs 3,000 crore in 2007-08.

Mr Behura also said mobile number portability (MNP) may be introduced only by the end of the year. MNP allows subscribers to change their operator without having to give up their mobile numbers. DoT had earlier said number portability would be introduced by September. However, regulatory issues, including tariffs and port charges, were yet to be decided by the telecom regulator.

While the two companies which have been given the licence to set up MNP in India — Syniverse and Telcordia — have told the telecom regulator that they would like to charge about Rs 200 for each subscriber porting, TRAI has pegged it at Rs 100.