The Hindu Business Line : Sarin writes to PM on spectrum worry

New Delhi, Nov. 10 After Bharti Airtel’s Chairman, Mr Sunil Mittal, and Idea Cellular’s promoter, Mr Kumarmanglam Birla, Vodafone’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr Arun Sarin, has now written to the Prime Minister, seeking his intervention on the spectrum allocation policy. Vodafone, Airtel and Idea Cellular are the worst-affected mobile operators as a result of the enhanced subscriber-linked spectrum allocation criteria recently prescribed by the Telecom Engineering Centre.

In his letter to the Prime Minister, Mr Sarin said he was concerned at the non-transparent way adopted by the Department of Telecom in taking decisions pertaining to spectrum allocation. Vodafone had paid nearly $11 billion to acquire a majority stake in Hutchison Essar and lack of spectrum could have an adverse impact on the company’s valuations . Most of the large GSM operators had worked out their investment plans assuming they would get at least 15 MHz spectrum, but this will not be possible if the TEC-specified norms are implemented. Earlier, Mr Mittal and Mr Birla had also written to the Prime Minister, expressing concern at the new policy being formulated by the Communication Ministry.

The TEC suggestion has been agreed to in principle by the Ministry of Communication though a new committee has been set up to review these norms. Detractors of GSM operators point out that as per the licence conditions no operator is eligible for more than 6.2 MHz spectrum and, therefore, available spectrum should be auctioned to new players.

GSM operators are peeved at the Ministry’s decision to allocate additional spectrum to State-run telecom companies even as they have been asked to pack in more subscribers. GSM operators are also worried that the decision to allow dual technology would allow Reliance Communication to get GSM spectrum ahead of the existing players.

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