The Hindu Business Line : Spectrum for mobile services will be available in Nov: Raja

New Delhi, Oct 3 The Union Communications and IT Minister, Mr A. Raja, on Wednesday said that additional spectrum for mobile services would be made available by November. While this is good news for the spectrum-starved mobile operators, sharp differences between GSM-based operators and CDMA operators on the method of allocating the available radio frequency came to the fore at a meeting held by the Minister on Wednesday.

Spectrum release

“The spectrum issue with the Ministry of Defence will be resolved by November end,” Mr Raja said. The Communications Ministry has been demanding release of 45 MHz of spectrum from the Defence Ministry for further expansion of mobile sector. However, the Defence forces had refused to release the airwaves unless an alternative medium of communication was set up by the Department of Telecom. However, with DoT now on the verge of completing an optical fibre cable network connecting key Air Force installations, about 25 Mhz of spectrum is expected to be released in the first phase.

Claims of First right

But the DoT has a new problem at hand with several companies already claiming first right to spectrum even before it is released. Existing GSM operators lead by the Cellular Operators Association of India said that they had the first right to spectrum since the licence agreement with the Government assures adequate radio frequency based on the operator’s subscriber base.

In a presentation made during the meeting with the Minister of Communication, the COAI said that the existing spectrum allocation criteria should be continued with and all operators who have applied before December 2006 should be given priority.

From the GSM camp, Mr Sunil Mittal, Chairman and Managing Director, Bharti Group, Mr Asim Ghosh, CEO, Vodafone Essar, Mr Sanjeev Aga, Managing Director, Idea Cellular, were present for the meeting.

CDMA opposition

The GSM operators were opposed by Mr Mahendra Nahata, Chairman, HFCL, and Mr Rajiv Mehrotra, Chairman, Shyam Telelink, on the grounds that as per the licence agreement, the Government should allocate only 6.2 Mhz of bandwidth to the existing operators.

The AUTSPI said that CDMA players wanted the same amount of spectrum as was being given to GSM players.