India, April 15 -- The Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC) has refused a request from three telecom companies to "arbitrarily" hand over the mobile connectivity infrastructure on the 33.5-km Metro 3 corridor, also known as the Aqua Line, to one of the firms. The metro rail authority has instead asked the companies to participate in the ongoing bidding process to select a neutral cellular operator for the fully-underground metro line.

As reported by HT on March 20, earlier in the month, MMRC terminated its contract with ACES India, the firm which had installed and operated infrastructure for mobile connectivity on the Aqua Line, as it could not meet the key requirement of on-boarding at least three telecom service providers. Only Vodafon...