The Hindu Business Line : New telecom licences: DoT fixes cut-off date

New Delhi, Nov. 5 AT&T Global, Hinduja Group, Videocon, Moser Baer and more than 20 other companies, which have applied for new telecom licences, will have to wait longer for foraying into mobile services.

The Department of Telecom has decided to first process the applications for new telecom licences made by companies before September 25.

About 46 companies have put in their applications of which over 50 per cent have applied after September 25. The new cut-off date comes despite DoT announcing that it will take new applications till October 1.

DoT has decided that those companies, which have applied after September 25, will be considered at a later date if any spectrum is left available after processing the applications received prior to that date. Others who will have to wait longer include real estate developer BPTP Ltd, Ispat Industry and Tulip IT.

As per the policy finalised by DoT, existing GSM operators which are seeking additional spectrum for circles where they are already offering mobile services, will have the first right to available spectrum provided they fulfil the new subscriber-based policy.

Subscriber-linked policy

However, the subscriber-linked criteria has been increased by up to eight times in some circles putting out all the existing operators out of contention.

Only Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar will get spectrum in West Bengal. In fact as per the new policy, GSM operators require only a maximum of 6.2 Mhz spectrum in most circles, which means that DoT could technically ask them to surrender excess radio frequency as operators such as Airtel and and Vodafone have already got 10 Mhz in some circles.

Network expansion

The second priority for spectrum allocation will be given to those existing GSM operators which have applied for licences to expand their existing network into more number of circles. Operators including Idea Cellular, Vodafone Essar and Aircel will therefore get spectrum for starting services in new circles.

The third in the list are those companies which have applied for dual technologies. CDMA players including Reliance Communications, Shyam and HFCL will fall into this category and will get spectrum for rolling out GSM services. The existing GSM operators have strongly opposed this move and have gone to court against this decision.

The fourth category for spectrum allocation comprises all the other companies which have applied for new telecom licences before September 25. This includes Spice Communication, Parsvnath, Datacom, BPL, Shyam Telelink and HFCL.

Spectrum will be allocated on a first come first served basis. As per DoT’s estimates, about 20 Mhz of spectrum will be available in the next two months while another 40 Mhz is expected to be released by the Defence at a later date.