• Investment World
• eWorld
• Brand Line
• Mentor
• Life
• Brand Quest
• The New Manager
• Smartbuy

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Cross Currency

• Rates
  
  

Shipping

• Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources
• In Focus
• In Depth
• Events 2007

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• The Hindu ePaper
• Business Line
• Business Line ePaper
• Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

Ramesh Sharma

Balancing act: The TRAI Chairman, Mr Nripendra Misra (right) with member, Mr A.K. Sawhney, during an interaction with Mobile Virtual Network Operators in the Capital on Monday. -

Our Bureau

New Delhi, June 16 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) may decide against allowing telecom players to share spectrum. This may come as a blow to companies which want to foray into the Indian mobile sector as mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).

Multinational telecom players including BT, France Telecom and Verizon had pushed for spectrum sharing in a bid to make the MVNO business more attractive.

MVNOs are a category of service providers who take bandwidth and infrastructure on wholesale from existing mobile operators and then resell it in the market with their own branding and tariff plans.

TRAI is in the process of formulating guidelines for allowing MVNOs in the country and held an open house on Monday to discuss various issues.

While MVNOs may be allowed to share mobile network infrastructure such as tower, radio base stations and also buy airtime from existing players, without ownership of spectrum they will be totally dependent on licenced operators.

While global telecom players wanted TRAI to permit spectrum sharing, most of the Indian operators including Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communication and BSNL are against the move. Indian operators argue that spectrum is as it is a scarce resource and, therefore, there was not much scope to share it with anyone else.

However, those in favour of sharing of spectrum said that it would allow optimum utilisation of radio frequency, especially in rural areas where most existing mobile operators have excess bandwidth.

“Spectrum is probably scarce in about 20 cities but in other parts of the country, there are enough excess radio frequencies that can be shared. It will also allow operators to optimally utilise their spectrum and earn more revenues. For instance, at night time most of the networks are idle. If an MVNO is allowed to hire capacity and offer special night calling packages, then it will benefit consumers,” said an MNC telecom player.

Orange Business Services, a division of France Telecom, said, “India is already a mature market and taking into consideration the telecom target of 500 million connections by 2010 set by Government, we feel it’s the right time for the introduction of MVNO in India. At the same time, there should not be high entry barriers which will act as deterrents for new players from being a party to the MVNO.”

More Stories on : Telecommunications | Regulatory Bodies & Rulings

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Sunil Mittal gets award

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line