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Our Bureau

New Delhi, Aug. 1 In a move that could leave mobile phone users continuing to face problems of network congestion and dropped calls, the Defence Ministry has said that it will not vacate the spectrum it occupies, till December 2008. This puts to bed hopes the Department of Telecom (DoT) had of securing at least 42.5 MHz, of the 45 Mhz promised, from the Air Force. The Defence Ministry has proposed that spectrum is to be released only on the successful and simultaneous commissioning of a secure network for all the three services. Since the Army was using at least half of the 42.5 MHz spectrum, as was the Air Force, a simultaneous commissioning of networks is in order, it has argued.

Sources in the telecom sector counter this saying that since each of the three services has different needs, spectrum allotment need not be on a blanket basis.

The Defence Ministry has also suggested that the Communications and IT Ministry take up the costs associated with core network, access network, overlay satellite network and associated equipment required.

It is learnt that the DoT, which had started work for all three services together in April 2006, faced problems with the Army and Navy. Sources in the DoT say that both these services had increased their approved requirements by a factor of at least 10, leading to a cost of about Rs 4,000 crore. The DoT had referred these to BSNL for a solution within a ‘reasonable’ framework. But, talks have been inconclusive.

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