The Hindu Business Line : Operators stick to their guns on spectrum

New Delhi, Nov. 21 Instead of enabling a common ground on spectrum allocation, the meeting convened by the Department of Telecom on spectrum allocation once again brought out the sharp differences that exist within the industry.

DoT had invited honchos of all the existing mobile operators in a bid to resolve the controversy that has arisen as a result of policy decisions taken by the Ministry of Communication.

According to sources, all the operators stuck to their known positions. Mr Sunil Mittal, Chairman, Bharti Group, told Mr D.S. Mathur, Secretary, DoT, during the meeting that GSM operators had no issues with new players foraying into the sector as long as the Government released spectrum to existing operators first as per the current subscriber linked allocation policy.

Mr Mittal was backed by Mr Asim Ghosh, CEO, Vodafone Essar, who said that large amounts of investments had been made by the existing players and the Government should honour its commitment in terms of making spectrum available.

Mr Ghosh also inferred that CDMA operators wanted to offer GSM services because they were targeting the high-class mobile users.

This was opposed by Mr Anil Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Communication, who said that existing GSM players should not have got more than 6.2 Mhz spectrum as per their licence agreement.

Mr Ambani was backed by Mr Mahendra Nahata, Chairman, HFCL, and Mr Rajiv Mehrotra, Chairman, Shyam Telecom. During the meeting Mr Mehrotra also asked DoT why the Government was not issuing letter of intent to the companies which were waiting in the queue for a new licence.

Mr Nahata said that his company was being discriminated against by DoT by not issuing LoIs. Dr B.K. Modi, Chairman of Spice Group, and Mr Sanjeev Aga, CEO, Idea Cellular, were among those who attended the meeting at Sanchar Bhawan.

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