"I am pleased to announce that the cellular industry has agreed for termination of calls of basic players, even WLL services with immediate effect," Mahajan told reporters in New Delhi.

Asked what had prompted cellular operators to give such a commitment, Mahajan said that the operators had raised issues relating to level playing field which he has promised to look into.

Asked what had prompted MTNL to drag itself into the impasse, Mahajan said, "I have just returned from a week-long trip and I cannot say anything at this moment but I don't oppose what it (MTNL) did."

Mahajan, who held a 90-minute long meeting with the cellular industry to end the logjam over termination of calls from WLL-based limited mobility services to cellular players, said he would request telecom regulator TRAI to come up with regulations for a "just and fair" interconnect regime.

Interestingly, the same cellular industry represented by Sunil Mittal of Bharti Group, Virat Bhatia of AT&T and COAI president Rajeev Chandrashekhar, which had last week defied TRAI's directive to interconnect and termed TRAI's directiveas illegal, unjust and biased, on Monday agreed to interconnect with basic telecom players after the meeting.

Surprisingly, TRAI was saying the same thing to cellular players as Mahajan, which was not to snap links with other operators since regulations on interconnect user charge by TRAI would be announced soon.

However, the industry appeared to have listened to the minister and agreed to allow unblocking of termination of calls of basic operators including WLL mobile with immediate effect.

"They had raised issues relating to level playing field such as access charge and entry fee. As far as the issue of access charge is concerned, I have requested telecom regulator

TRAI to come out with a just and fair interconnect regime," he said expressing hope that it would come through in the next couple of days.

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What do you think about the story? Read what others have to say: Number of User Comments: 19 Sub: cell cos agree to interconnect with WLL And we heard sermons from every other politicians that liberalisation was beneficial to the customer/consumer. And no one cared for the customer in this case. ... Posted by SUNDAR S Sub: cell cos agree to interconnect wll 'sarkari' was never up to the mark.then we got the private operators to play the game.now, we again need there help. Posted by cherian Sub: Insider's got nothing inside "Insider" if you want to pay as much as the cell co's are fleecing you & yet support them then that's your choice. Hey, this ... Posted by Kim Sub: how can on natural justice it is justified that MTNL gets paid 295/- per month by cell users and when some one calls from land ... Posted by sinner Sub: interconnectivity Hope that a new era dawns in the communication sector in this country by this settlement. Posted by Anup Ramachandran