GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
Ministry of Communication and Information Technology
Department of Telecommunications
RAJYA SABHA
UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 539
ANSWERED ONFEBRUARY 27, 2015
QUESTION
Expiry of Telecom Licences
539. SHRI RAJEEV CHANDRASEKHAR:
Will the Minister of COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY be pleased to state:-
(a) whether in the recent past, consumers were affected after the expiry of telecom licences awarded to operators;
(b) whether TRAI or the Ministry has taken suo-motu cognisance of consumers being impacted at the end of the licence period; and
c) the action taken against those operators who did not port affected consumers to other operators?
ANSWER
THE MINISTER OF COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
(SHRI RAVI SHANKAR PRASAD)
(a) to (c): Sir, Due to expiry of its Cellular Mobile Telephone Service (CMTS) license, M/s Loop Mobile (India) Ltd. closed its operation on 29thNovember, 2014. To protect the interest of consumers of M/s Loop Mobile and to provide advance information about closure of service of M/s Loop and facilitate subscribers to port their mobile number to other service provider of their choice without any hassle, M/s Loop Mobile (India) Ltd. was directed on 30thSeptember, 2014, to inform the date of closure of its services in Mumbai LSA to all its existing subscribers in its aforesaid LSA either in writing or by sending SMS/E-mail, within ten days of the issue of the said direction and to every new subscriber at the time of his enrollment to its network.
Further, on 7th November, 2014, an additional service provider code was provided to M/s Loop so as to enable it to generate a large number of Unique Porting Codes in advance, for all of its subscriber base and also informed all subscribers of M/s Loop in Mumbai service area through a press release to port out from Loop’s network before 29thNovember, 2014.