Welcome Guest Login | Register | Site Map | | Make TelecomTiger my homepage     
Telecom News
Enterprise |  Policy & Regulation |  Mobiles & Tabs |  Corporate |  VAS |  People Movement  |  Technology  |  LTE
Policy & Regulation
RCom, RTL permitted to withdraw from USOF project
TT Correspondent |  |  24 Dec 2013

Reliance Communications and Reliance Telecom have been allowed to withdraw from rollout of services in rural areas under the Universal Services Obligation Fund (USOF) scheme by a law ministry's arbitral tribunal.

"I hold that the claimants are entitled to exit from their continued performance of the obligations under the agreements without levy of penalty or interest," Justice AR Lakshmanan said in the order issued last week.
 
The tribunal ruled that the companies can exit from all sites, including 8,500 implemented telecom sites and from about 5,000 non-implemented telecom towers across the country.

USOF was launched way back in 2007 to provide subsidy support for setting up and managing 7,871 infrastructure sites, or telecom towers, in rural and remote areas in 500 districts of 12 states. Both RCom and RTL had entered into an agreement with the USOF in June 2007.
 
The contention of the companies’ was that USOF failed to ensure delivery of a majority of telecom towers in a holistic manner and within the contractually-agreed timeline.

“RCom and RTL's legitimate and persistent stand with the USOF, that we have the right to be discharged from the reciprocal obligations under the agreement, is vindicated by this ruling”, said an RCom spokesperson.

    
Other Stories in this Section
 mail this article    print this article    Show and Post comment
24 Dec 2013(IST)  
Whitepaper
Maintain Business Continuity with Cisco ASR 9000 nV Technology
It is a virtual chassis solution where a pair of ASR 9000 routers acts as a single device by maintaining a single contr...read more
Simplify Your Network with Cisco ASR 9000 nV Technology
With the new Cisco Network Virtualization (nV) technology in the Cisco ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers, se...read more
Cisco Small Cell Solution: Reduce Costs, Improve Coverage
It is designed to address the challenge of mobile service coverage and to expand network capacity...read more