The Supreme Court of India had in February 2012 cancelled 122 licenses of 9 telecom companies which were issued by the then Telecom Minister, A. Raja.
The Court had recently allowed the companies to run their services until January 18th 2013 and if they are unable to secure any license, they will need to shut down their services.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has now ordered the companies who did not secure any license in the recently held spectrum auctions to inform their customers that they will not be able to use their services after January 18th, 2013.
Now, Russia’s Sistema which operated in India under the brand name MTS India, Norway’s Telenor which operates as Uninor, India’s Videocon and Tata Teleservices will have to inform their customers by sending an SMS or in writing about the termination of service within 10-days from the date of issuing this order.
Uninor, has already posted a notice about the shutdown of services over its official website for its customers from Kolkata and West Bengal telecom circle as you can see below.
All the above mentioned companies have in total about 26 million customers in different circles which are now advised to exhaust their existing mobile balance and migrate to other operators before January 18th, 2013.