The Hindu Business Line : Telecom authority mulls allowing spectrum sharing among operators

BROAD TALK: Mr D.S. Mathur, Telecom Secretary, and Mr Nripendra Misra, Chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, at a meeting in the Capital on Wednesday. — Kamal Narang

New Delhi June 6 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Wednesday said that it would consider making a recommendation to the Government to allow sharing of spectrum among telecom companies. The move could enable operators to tide over the acute spectrum crunch being faced by the industry.

"Once the Government accepts the recommendations of sharing of active and backhaul infrastructure, the next step will be sharing of scarce resource - spectrum," the TRAI Chairman, Mr Nripendra Misra, said on the sidelines of a regulatory seminar organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry.

TRAI had recently issued its recommendations to the Government on allowing the operators to share passive infrastructure such as towers and backhaul microwave capacity. It had, however, said that the decision regarding spectrum sharing and reselling by Mobile Virtual Network Operators would be taken later.

Spectrum is the basic raw material required to offer mobile services.

A study released jointly by CII and BDA points out that the spectrum crunch could pull back the mobile growth rate. While the Government has targeted 440 million wireless users by 2010, the study projects only 364 million in the next three years.

"The operators will miss the target if adequate spectrum is not released. The slowdown will begin from the end of 2007 when the gap between what could have been achieved with adequate spectrum and what will be achieved in reality due to lack of spectrum starts increasing," said Mr Duncan Clark, Chairman, BDA.

Mr Clark said that third-generation spectrum was critical to sustain the mobile growth as it would enable operators to free-up capacity to accommodate more 2G users even as the high-end subscribers will be able to get high-speed data services.

The study pointed out that operators were already running way above capacity in most circles, including Bihar, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Punjab. "It's not just the top 20 cities where operators are facing a spectrum crunch anymore. It has become more widespread and, therefore, regulatory decisions need to be made quicker," said Mr Kunal Bajaj, Director, BDA India.

Meanwhile, Mr D.S. Mathur, Secretary, DoT, said that additional spectrum would be released by July.