Migration to the unified licence regime could cost Reliance upto Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) and Tatas Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion), according to estimates being worked out by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

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According to sources, the basic operators combined would have to shell out upto Rs 2,000 crore (Rs 20 billion) to migrate to the unified licence regime from the existing service specific licence.

The group of ministers on telecom, headed by Finance Minister Jaswant Singh, has already decided in principle to move to the unified licence regime, and noted banker Deepak Parikh and Trai chairman Pradip Baijal have made presentations before the GoM on migration path to the proposed regime.

Since some of the basic operators also have cellular licences in some circles, the migration fee would depend upon the number of licence they want to convert into unified licences.                                                    

Sources said that in case the three big operators -- Reliance Infocomm, Tata Teleservices and Bharti -- desire to migrate to unified licence regime they together would have to pay Rs 1,900 crore (Rs 19 billion) and the balance Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) would come from small regional players like HFCL and Shyam telecom.     

Bharti Group has basic licence in Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and Haryana amongst other circles and if the company migrates to unified licence, it would have to pay upto Rs 400 crore (Rs 4 billion).

Baijal, in his presentation to the GoM, has recommended that in service area where there is no fourth operator -- Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Andaman and Nicobar and Assam amongst others -- no extra entry fee would be charged from the existing operators migrating to unified licensing regime.

The cellular operators would not be required to pay any extra entry fee as they have already been allowed to offer basic services when the government permitted basic operators to offer WLL services.

Explaining the rationale of numbers worked out for migration to the unified regime, sources said that in the case of Reliance, which is already offering cellular services in North-East, Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh, the company would not have to go for the unified licence in these circles.