The Hindu Business Line : DoT calls meet on frequency allocation

After putting it in cold storage for almost two years, the Wireless Planning and Co-ordination (WPC) wing of the Department of Telecom has called the telecom industry for a meeting on Tuesday to revive and finalise the National Frequency Allocation Plan (NFAP), which will be the guiding policy for all spectrum allocation in the country.

The draft NFAP was earlier put up for industry comments in 2005. However, the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) players have objected the WPC move and have shot off a note to the Wireless Advisor seeking a postponement.

CDMA operators are peeved at the fact that the WPC was seeking to simply rename the draft formulated in 2005 as NFAP 2007 without taking into consideration technological advancements such as Wi-Max and 3G.

Contention

“Considerable changes have taken place in the technological field requiring complete re-look at the NFAP. It may not be proper to just rename the draft NFAP 2005 as NFAP ,especially when the draft NFAP 2005 itself was not an agreed draft. In addition, there have been two recommendations relating to spectrum from the TRAI, which are still under the consideration of the Government.

“These recommendations will have a major impact on NFAP 2007 and it would be improper to finalise it without considering these recommendations,” said a letter from the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUTSPI).

However, GSM-based operators said that the WPC move was in accordance with the road map stipulated by the Government and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which is the global telecom standards and regulatory advisory body.

“NFAP has to be finalised before the Government decides on 3G and other spectrum related issues as it will form the basis of spectrum allocation in future. There cannot be a policy without NFAP. Besides this has to be finalised before the ITU meeting later this year,” said Mr T.V. Ramachandran, Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India.

CDMA operators

But the CDMA operators insist that NFAP has to be finalised after the ITU meeting. “In case the NFAP is finalised today, the decision of ITU will not be reflected. When the plan has been delayed by almost four years no harm will be done if thee finalisation of NFAP 2007 is postponed by another four to five months by which time the ITU decisions would be available and hopefully the Government would have finalised its 3G spectrum policy,” said AUSPI.

More Stories on : Telecommunications | Regulatory Bodies & Rulings

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

Stories in this Section
IBM Research working on transport innovations

Intelligroup to step up BPO, services biz

DoT calls meet on frequency allocation

Firstsource Q1 net rises 235%

Surana Tele revenues, net up

Educomp posts Rs 5.9-cr net in Q1

AP to have 3 new IIITs

Ericsson, TI in tie-up

‘High demand for talent in specialised domains’

More a formality than serious screening

Top executives give in to lure of blogs

3DLive on Windows Vista