A regulator pushing for a unified licence; telcos aligned broadly into two rival hate-your-guts camps; policymakers keen to uphold the proud Indian democratic tradition of making everyone, including themselves happy; an obsessed-with-the-case-before-it-and-that-only tribunal; and a court that wants to do right, and do good. These are some of the players in the great Indian telecom saga, a soap opera sans end that has been on for close to a decade.

India's New Telecom Policy of 1999 (popularly abbreviated as ntp'99) achieved many things: by enabling cellular telephony companies to move from a licence-fee regime-they had bid inordinately huge sums for licences, you see-to a revenue-sharing one, it rendered them financially viable. Between 1994, when cellular telephony services were launched in India, and 1999, these companies added 1.2 million subscribers to their fold. Since 1999, they have done over 14 million. And between 1994 and 2003, cellular tariffs have fallen 80 per cent in some cases.

However, ntp'99 did something else: it told the world that, here, in India policy could be unmade. Whine, complain, rant, litigate, and lobby, it said, and you can get your way. Most telcos that operate in India got the message. And Indian telecom has never been the same again.

Expectedly, then, both cellular telephony companies and mobile telephony ones are, at once, happy and unhappy with a recent judgment of the Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal. The Supreme Court had asked the tribunal to look into the issue of basic telephony companies providing limited-in-letter-but-unlimited-in-reality mobile services, something that became possible after the government decided in 2001 that it was alright for a company with a basic telephony licence to provide 'limited mobility' using a wireless in local loop (WLL) platform and code division multiple access (CDMA) technology. Today, there are some 3.3 million 'limited mobility' subscribers. The tribunal declared CDMA-on-WLL limited mobile legal, but attached several riders restricting such services to a short distance calling area (typically within a radius of 30 km) and proscribing value-added services that actually involve sophisticated mobile telephony technology.

Both parties to the dispute admit that they are likely to approach the Supreme Court.

In the meantime, India's telecom regulator, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), has floated the concept of a unified licence that could include cellular, basic, national long distance, and international long distance telephony, even internet provision services. It is positioning this all-in-one licence as the panacea for all the litigious ills afflicting the system. Never mind that migrating existing licence holders to such a super-licence would probably entail more litigation.

TRAI's suggestion makes sense from the technological point of view. There's a fair degree of overlap, in terms of infrastructure, between most communication, computing, and entertainment networks. A unified licence will probably allow companies to provide a bouquet of telephony and internet services at a far lower cost than they would have otherwise done. Only, India's telecom regulator has consistently dissuaded companies with a presence in more than one node of the telecommunications chain from bundling services. Even the consultation paper on unified licensing put out by TRAI is silent on this.

There's also the 3G question. Sooner than later, all telecom networks will have to become third generation ones (increasing consumer demand for value-added data services will provide the impetus for this). Surely, the government doesn't want to issue unified licences now, migrate existing telcos to a unified regime, and then, a few years down the line, go through the same routine with 3G licences?

The government has several options before it: Push for unified licensing; get basic companies wishing to offer limited mobile services to cough up an entry fee; migrate every existing telco, free of charge, to a 3G licence; and a few others. Its decision is unlikely to have a long-term impact on anything, save the health of a few telcos. Through a decade of bickering, lobbying, changing policies, and litigation, India's teledensity has soared, from 1.56 in 1997 to around six today. Still, it'll help if the government can introduce a degree of permanence into whatever it decides. A policy that changes every year is no policy at all.