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Our Bureau

New Delhi , Sept. 8

EVEN before the Government-sponsored joint working group on spectrum has met for the first time, the CDMA and GSM operators have once again entered into a war of words.

While CDMA-based operators today said that the GSM operators have misrepresented facts for their own short-term financial and business objectives, the Cellular Operator's Association of India (COAI), the apex body of GSM operators, have dismissed the allegations as baseless.

Mr James Person, Vice-President, Asia Pacific and Programs CDMA Development Group (CDG), told Business Line, "We welcome the proposed working group on spectrum, but it is important that the Government implements its stated policy of being technology neutral. GSM operators are wrong in saying that CDMA players should be given lesser amount of spectrum just because it's more efficient."

Mr T.V. Ramachandran, Director-General, COAI, said GSM players never accepted CDMA technology as more efficient but that the technological aspects allowed CDMA players to pack in more subscribers in a given radio frequency compared to GSM operators.

The CDG has also written a letter to the Department of Telecom (DoT) saying, "We are deeply concerned at the deliberate and misleading propaganda being unleashed by certain vested interests with a view to vitiating the policy environment and spreading misinformation and confusion in the minds of the public and the media. In particular, we would like to draw attention to a series of recent representations made by the COAI, where facts have been distorted to suit the partisan and short-term financial and business objectives of private GSM operators."

GSM and CDMA operators have been at loggerheads with each other over the quantum of radio frequency allocated to each other. While CDMA operators such as Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservices have demanded equal spectrum to what is being given to GSM players, the latter has been opposing it on grounds that it would disrupt level playing field.

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