The Hindu Business Line : Remove cap on number of mobile operators in a circle, says TRAI

New Delhi, Aug. 29 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Wednesday suggested that the Government should not cap the number of mobile operators and instead ask the cellular operators to pay an upfront fee for additional spectrum beyond 10 Mhz.

If this recommendation, aimed at improving the utilisation of radio waves, is accepted by the Government, an operator like Airtel or Reliance will have to pay as much as Rs 1,500 crore to get a 5 Mhz band across the country. This is equivalent to what the fourth cellular operator had paid four years back for a pan India licence.

In its recommendations on a wide range of issues, TRAI has also suggested imposing a higher yearly spectrum charge on operators wanting more than 10 Mhz frequency from 5 per cent at present to 6 per cent of the annual revenues.

TRAI has also suggested an increase in the number of subscribers that the operators will be required to pack in using the given spectrum. For example, while an operator in Delhi at present is required to get 1 million subscribers to qualify for 10 Mhz frequency band, TRAI has suggested that the number of subscriber be raised to 2 million in the same bandwidth. Going by the new formula most of the existing operators may not qualify to get any additional spectrum in the near future.

Though TRAI said that increasing the subscribers is only an interim move, the recommendations are in favour of enabling new players. Operators such as Idea Cellular, Aircel and Spice, which have applied for new licences, can now hope to get priority in getting the available spectrum. New applicants such as Parsvnath, HFCL and ByCell may also get the spectrum as the revised allocation formula suggested by TRAI effectively puts most of the existing operators out of contention for a while. For a long term spectrum plan, TRAI has said that the Government should set up a high powered committee to draw a road map on spectrum availability, pricing mechanism and allocation. TRAI has also proposed that any future allocation of spectrum in bands other than 1800 Mhz, 900 Mhz and 800 Mhz bands should be auctioned.