Kapil Sibal says M&A norms for telcos need to be liberal

NEW DELHI: Merger and acquisition guidelines in the telecoms sector need to be liberal, Telecoms Minister Kapil Sibal said on Monday.

The country is overhauling its decade-old telecoms policy in a bid to make the world's second-largest market for mobile phone services more transparent after the sector was hit by a multi-billion-dollar telecoms licensing scandal.

Current rules do not allow one company to hold 10 per cent or more in two competing operators in a telecoms zone, a regulation analysts have called restrictive.

Sibal said that the new telecoms policy would be finalised by the end of this year, and the allocation of telecom licences would be delinked from mobile spectrum in the future.

India's most recent telecoms policy was framed in 1999, when the sector was dominated by the state monopoly and when few imagined the country would rapidly become the world's fastest growing market for mobile phone services.

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