The Hindu Business Line : Spectrum: Operators differ on mandate given to panel

New Delhi, Dec. 5 After sparring over the Department of Telecom’s proposals on spectrum allocation, GSM and CDMA operators are now fighting it out over the mandate given to the panel set by the Government to review the subscriber-based criteria.

The Cellular Operators Association has questioned the very mandate of the panel by saying that the review was to be done for the existing subscriber-based allocation criteria and not those suggested by the Telecom Engineering Centre.

On the other hand, the Association of Unified Telecom Services Providers of India has shot off a letter to the Chairman of the panel that GSM operators were deliberately trying to derail the process by raising issues at the time when the panel was close to finalising its report.

In a letter to the panel Chairman, Mr R. Bandhopadhyay, COAI’s Mr T.V. Ramachandran said: “It is submitted that the mandate to the Committee is to review the existing criteria and to that extent, I firmly believe that the starting point of the Committee can only be with reference to the existing criteria and not the criterion given in the TEC Report on Spectral Efficiency, or, for that matter, even the TRAI recommendations. I am extremely concerned that the 2006 criteria is not even being referred to in the Committee’s deliberations and all discussions are being incorrectly focused around the recent report of the TEC.”

In response, AUSPI said: “The agenda of the committee was clearly known from the very beginning. The present attempt by COAI is to delay the technical discussion for fixing the subscriber criteria.” The CDMA operators said that COAI should have raised the issue in the first meeting on November 16.

‘Accept TEC criteria’

Meanwhile, the former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Mr Chandrababu Naidu, has shot off another letter to the Prime Minister saying that the TEC prescribed subscriber allocation norms should be adopted for spectrum allocation. “With the acceptance of TEC criteria, the available spectrum will allow commencement of services by minimum 4 new operators. This will yield for the Government Rs 6,500 crore as entry fee and up to Rs 20,000 crore as direct and indirect taxes on full rollout of network by new operator,” he said.

The meeting of the spectrum committee, scheduled for Wednesday, did not take place due to the non-availability of one of the experts from the Indian Institute of Technology. It has been re-scheduled for Thursday.

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