The Hindu Business Line : 3G spectrum auction

These amounts are costs to the companies and will, therefore, be reflected in the prices of 3G services to subscribers. When the idea is to push broadband and put a telephone in the hands of every aam aadmi, should costs that are not intrinsic to the provision of services be imposed?

A relieving feature could be that the maximum amount tendered in the auctions may be collected and kept in an escrow account and returned to customers by way of rebates on the ARPU. A mechanism could be worked out by which this would be automatically shown in the bills for the post-paid customers and the credit rebated from recharge prices of pre-paid customers.

Telecom equipment manufacture in the country is practically dead. We are paying heavily for the intellectual property of those companies.

The amount collected from auctions of 3G spectrum and of the Universal Service Fund should be utilised for a massive programme of R&D to develop our own technological know-how.

This is what China did and, therefore, it has now two world-class companies ZTE and Huawei, which are dictating standards to the world.

T. H. Chowdary Secunderabad

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