In a very shocking announcement, The Depertment Of Telecom (India) has asked Sivasankaran-backed S-Tel (a joint venture between the Siva Group and Bahrain Telecommunications Co) to shut down it’s network and operations in all the three regions where it is currently operating – just after two months of launching it’s mobile services. S-Tel started it’s operations in Himachal Pradesh, Orissa and Bihar starting from December 2009. S-Tel has been using pictures of religious places and deities to do their promotion and also has launched some innovative tariff schemes.
Although DoT has not confirmed so as to why this was ordered but there are indications indicated that either the company’s network may not have passed the scrutiny of the security agencies or the Home Ministry may have objected to the Bahrain-based Batelco’s presence in the venture. Some also say that STel’s network equipment (manufactured by China’s ZTE) may not have got the security clearance.
Amidst all this confusion it is neither the Govt. nor the Telecom Operators who have to take the grinding. It is the comman man – the subscribers – who fall nothing less than a prey to such incidents. There are reports that almost 5 lakh subscribers of S-Tel in this region might be hit as a result of this order. And the sad part is you can not hold anyone responsible for the consumer’s plight. Apart from this, the announcement may also hit India’s trade relations with the Gulf countries in case S-Tel is actually found out to be the defaulters.
And this is not the first time that such a thing has happened. In 2002, the DoT had taken back the licences given to the Usha-Group-promoted Koshika and last year, the DoT revoked the licences issued to Russian venture ByCell.
