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Paving the way for another round of spectrum auctions this year, an Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) today decided to earmark the 700 Mhz band for offering fourth generation (4G) mobile services. This comes as a major victory for the Telecom Ministry as the move was opposed by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting that wanted parts of the spectrum band for mobile TV services.
“The I&B Ministry has kindly agreed to vacate that band and that issue has been resolved,” the Telecom Minister, Mr Kapil Sibal, said after the meeting of the EGoM. This will make available more spectrum for broadband players such as Reliance Industries for offering high speed video and data services. Mr Sibal had recently said that auctions for awarding 4G spectrum will be held this year.
He added that the issue relating to vacating airwaves between 1700 Mhz and 2000 Mhz spectrum bands is yet to be resolved and hoped that a decision will be taken at the next meeting of EGoM scheduled for the coming week. This band is currently being used by the Defence forces.
The Defence Ministry had agreed to give only 150 units of spectrum in this band for telecom operators but the DoT has been pushing for 230 units. However, the Defence forces had raised concerns about non-fulfilment of commitments made by the DoT under a Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2010.
As per the MoU signed between the two ministries, the Defence Ministry had agreed to vacate spectrum in phases. In return, the DoT had committed to set up an exclusive optical fibre cable network for armed forces and waive spectrum usage charges for the Defence. In addition DoT was supposed to create an exclusive defence spectrum band.
However, the DoT has not completed any of these tasks because of financial constraints. The Planning Commission has approved Rs 800 crore for the project against the DoT demand of Rs 6,767.94 crore which included Rs 5,000 crore earmarked for the OFC based network for Defence services.
Sources said that once the Finance Ministry makes adequate allocation, the DoT will then be able to speed up the process. All this is good news for telecom companies which can now get more airwaves for their operations. More spectrum would in turn improve quality of services for consumers.
tkt@thehindu.co.in
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