All telecom stocks took a hike on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on Tuesday

RELATED ARTICLES Trai withdraws complaints against Airtel, Idea and Loop Telecom stocks tank; Bharti down over 4% Facebook stock slide puts new pressures on company Trai got over 4k complaints against telecom operators in FY12 Don't present misleading ads of tariff plans: Trai to telcos

after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Monday proposed to levy a fixed entry fee of Rs 20 crore for a national-level unified licence under the new regime.

“Low entry fees and a district-level licence could increase competition in the existing 15-player industry,” Ambit Capital analysts Ankur Rudra and Parita Ashar said in a note.

However, investors seem to be ignoring the competition factor, if Tuesday’s stock movement is anything to go by. The four listed telecom firms Reliance Communication, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices and Bharti Airtel rose 2,78 per cent, 2 per cent, 1.54 per cent and 1.40 per cent, respectively.

“The unified licence will be given without any spectrum. The licensee has to separately apply/bid for obtaining spectrum as per the prevailing policy,” Trai said in a statement on Monday.

Amit K Ahire and Sameer Pardikar, analysts at Karvy Stock Broking Institutional Equities, said: “At present, an operator needs to take separate licence for services such as mobile, fixed-line, NLD, ILD, broadcasting, DTH and other allied telecom services. Going forward, the new licence will be technology-neutral and the operator can offer any of these services.”

Trai’s proposals are in line with the draft new telecom policy that was unveiled last year, which said future mobile permits would be delinked from spectrum.