The Hindu Business Line : Sunil Mittal slams DoT’s spectrum allocation plan

New Delhi, Nov. 1 Stung by Department of Telecom’s decision to increase the subscriber base required for getting additional spectrum, Mr Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman and Managing Director, Bharti Group, has told the Government that the move will destabilise the telecom sector.

In a letter to the DoT Secretary, Mr D.S. Mathur, he said: “We would not claim to be experts in our sector but can certainly claim some degree of knowledge to challenge the absurd proposed spectrum allocation which has been put forth by the Telecom Engineering Centre. The outcome of the hurried exercise at TEC is a sad commentary on how international and time tested norms for spectrum allocation are being ignored.”

TEC had on Wednesday said that existing GSM operators should be asked to pack in more subscribers before they can get more spectrum.

The subscriber numbers suggested by it are so high that none of themwill be eligible for additional spectrum for at least two more years.

Only Bharti Airtel and Essar Vodafone can hope to get some spectrum in West Bengal as per TEC’s subscriber-based allocation, which has been accepted by the Government. Mr Mittal said that before DoT moves ahead with the revised norms for spectrum allocation, the Government should demonstrate efficient utilisation of spectrum by immediately withdrawing a large part of it from MTNL and prove that a high quality network can be run by managing the spectrum.

“This to my mind will go a long way in establishing your department’s expertise in the matter, which we in the private sector and the operators the world over have not been able to figure out,” he said.

He said that while private operators have been asked to get more subscribers, “State-owned BSNL and MTNL, which have significantly lower subscribers, have been doled out, at least from the department’s point of view, generous spectrum even when they have not fulfilled the subscriber base criteria as prescribed in the current policy. Surely the experts within DoT should have helped BSNL and MTNL, to be the most spectrum efficient and be role models and not the other way around as most inefficient operators having the largest amount of spectrum with a lower subscriber base,” Mr Mittal said.

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