Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata on Wednesday met communications minister Arun Shourie to press for a unified licencing regime. Tata also took up the issue of sharing international long distance infrastructure between Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.

Wednesday's meeting is significant as Reliance chief Mukesh Ambani had also met Shourie on Saturday to discuss the controversy over roaming facility for WLL subscribers.

Also Read ABTO asks govt not to implement Trai recommendations

Ambani is expected to meet the minister again this week. Tata and Reliance are the two largest players offering WLL services. Industry sources said that in the meeting Tata also raised the issue of WLL limited mobility.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had last week asked the department of telecom to review the terms of the basic service licence in order to limit the mobility of WLL operators.

Trai's advice came on the basis of the order of the telecom tribunal on August 8, which had put stringent conditions while allowing limited mobility, bringing into question the viability of the WLL business.

Sources said that Tata on Wednesday gave his support to the government's move to unify licence of telecom service providers in order to resolve the tangle in the telecom sector.

The telecom regulator has already floated a consultation paper on the matter which has been strongly opposed by cellular operators on grounds that it favoured only large players.

In a separate meeting, Shourie met the department of telecom secretary Vinod Vaish to discus the issue of call forwarding for WLL operators.

The government sources said that the DoT was of the view that call forwarding was part of the basic services licence.

Call forwarding is used by WLL operators like Reliance to offer roaming facilites to their subscribers. However Vaish said they are yet to firm up their position on the issue.

On the issue of sharing ILD infrastructure, the Tatas have offered to sell VSNL's network to BSNL. Post the sale VSNL would lease out the network for its own ILD traffic. The other option was that BSNL leases out infrastructure for launching its ILD services next year.

The Tatas rationale was that there was no need for duplicating capacity for the same service.