Uninor has said that it will soon scale down its operations in the Indian telecom market from the current 13 circles to 9 amid continuing uncertainty over the available telecom licenses.

The company will implement a plan to gradually scale down operations in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Orissa circles. The company network in these circles is currently operational and thus the company will move gradually to scale down its operations in order to avoid disruptions.

Uninor has also assured that it will give customers at-least 30 days to move to alternative networks before it begins a scale down. The company has also stopped activations of new connections in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Orissa circles.

The telecom service provider has a total of 6.8 million customers in these circles and about 43 per cent of them are active users. It employs 400 direct employees in these four circles and the company will look for possibilities of relocating some of the employees to other Uninor circles and will also offer help is finding work elsewhere.

Uninor has also said that it will strengthen its operations in other 9 circles of UP East, UP West, Bihar & Jharkhand, Kolkata, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Mumbai, Maharashtra and Goa and Gujarat.

"This will place the company in a stronger financial and operational position to enter the auctions from, rules permitting. The company will maintain a smaller network and remain operational in the four effected circles. The other nine circles will continue to build up their operations aggressively," Uninor said.