Telcos to provide details of unauthorised OFCs

Nine telecom majors, on Monday, agreed to provide details of unauthorised optical fibre cables (OFC) laid by them in City by giving letter of acceptance to Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP).

Chief Executive Officers (CEO) of Airtel, Aircel, Spice Idea, Vodafone, Reliance RGIL, Reliance Geo Infocom Limited, Tata Tele Services, Tata Communication and Sterlite attended the meeting held in BBMP head office. There were executives below the rank of CEO of four firms, who too wanted to give BBMP letter of acceptance but the Palike officials asked them to send their CEOs to give them the said letter.

Letters rejected

Corporator N R Ramesh, whose report on unauthorised OFCs, brought the telecom firms to the negotiation table, said, “We took the letter of acceptance from only nine telecom companies. There were representatives of four other telecom companies who too wished to give us the letter of acceptance, but we refused to accept it from them because they were below the rank of CEOs, who do not have any administrative powers to undertake any oath on behalf of their firms.”

The executives of four telecom firms agreed to provide the letter of acceptance by the CEOs of their companies on Tuesday.

The CEOs of nine firms also agreed to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with BBMP in the next 10 days and the copy of the said document would be mailed to them on Tuesday morning, so that they can object or suggest on the content of the agreement.

Ramesh said the BBMP relaxed many of its previous conditions to bring the telecom firms to negotiation table and to generate revenue from OFCs.

“In the last 14 years, we could get only Rs 58 crore but if our telecom (OFC) policy is accepted, we will get Rs 58 crore in just one month and telecom firms will be a perennial source of our income. The palike would get a huge money by regularising the unauthorised OFCs,” he said.