The Hindu Business Line : Tata Teleservices, GSM operators clash on spectrum allocation

New Delhi, Dec. 4 A new front has opened in the ongoing battle for spectrum with Tata Teleservices and GSM operators training their guns on each other over quantum of radio frequency.

The Cellular Operators Association of India has told the panel, set up to review the subscriber-based spectrum allocation norms, that the Government should give only 1 Mhz of spectrum to CDMA players for every 4Mhz of radio frequency given to GSM players. At present CDMA operators get 1Mhz for every 2Mhz given to GSM operators.

On the other hand, Tata Teleservices has said that CDMA players should get exactly the same amount of spectrum as their GSM counterparts.

Biased allocation

Mr Anil Sardana, Managing Director, Tata Teleservices Ltd, said: “It is very dismaying that the proposal again talks about spectrum allocation which is 2:1 in favour of GSM. It is this very cause which has pushed CDMA players to move towards GSM as the frequency allocation to GSM has been very liberal. Additionally, for the same number of customers that Tata Telservices has now, some of the large GSM operators had more than double the spectrum when they held same spectrum, by virtue of which such GSM operators have saved thousands of crores of capital investments.”

On the other hand, COAI in a letter to the Additional Secretary, Mr S. Bandhopadhyay, who is also heading the panel, said: “It may be noted that the Association of Basic Telecom Operators (now AUSPI) of which Tata Teleservices is a member, had submitted an affidavit to court in the WLL (M) case that the capacity of CDMA is 5.3 times the capacity of GSM. In fact, the CDMA Development Group Web site even today claims CDMA has 4-5 times higher capacity than GSM. Hence the latest claim of Tata Teleservices is completely flawed and without any scientific basis.”

The panel is scheduled to hold its meeting for the fourth time on Wednesday.

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