Spectrum swapping

The Narendra Modi government must be credited for pushing through the agreement between the department of telecom and the ministry of defence for vacating spectrum for mobile broadband services. The deal ensures that mobile operators get access to 150 MHz of additional spectrum, a sizeable boost for the plan of taking broadband to the masses. It also secures India’s national interest as the defence forces will now have their own spectrum band for strategic communication, thus putting an end to the constant confrontation with the telecom department. However, it is mystifying why such an agreement has taken eight years to execute. DoT and the defence ministry, under the UPA government, have been discussing this arrangement since 2007, which led to a MoU in 2009. This specified clear milestone-linked action points for DoT, including laying an optical fibre network connecting nearly 400 key defence installations and creating an exclusive Defence Spectrum Band. In exchange, the defence forces agreed to give up 150 MHz spectrum between the 1700 MHz and 2000 MHz bands for mobile telephony services. All of this was supposed to have been done by 2012. But DoT failed to keep its end of the bargain, delaying the vacation of spectrum by the defence forces. Had additional spectrum been released two years ago, the broadband landscape of the country would have been very different.

To compound this delay, the IT and communications ministry now says it will take another year to get spectrum vacated from the defence forces due to complexities involved in shifting frequency bands. While this may be true for spectrum bands such as the 1800 MHz, where there are existing users, swapping unused airwaves is hardly a complex task. For example, the defence forces are to exchange the 15 MHz bandwidth in the 2100 MHz band with a similar amount of spectrum held by DoT in the 1900 MHz band. Both these frequency bands are lying idle and the swap can be done quickly and painlessly.

Given this, the decision to auction only 5 MHz of spectrum in the 2100 MHz frequency in the February auction is unhelpful. A small block such as this is just enough for one player to offer 3G services; with at least seven operators eyeing this bandwidth, the bidding could skyrocket to astronomical amounts. While this artificial scarcity of spectrum will ensure that the exchequer realises higher revenues, an expensive spectrum auction will force the operators to fix high tariffs, which will defeat the purpose of reaching broadband to the masses. The Centre must not procrastinate like the earlier government and walk the talk when it comes to taking decisions. Programmes such as the 100 Smart City project and the Digital India campaign are dependent on the availability of affordable broadband, another reason for speeding up the process of making spectrum available for commercial use.

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