The Telecom Commission is likely to ask the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to reconsider its recommendations on spectrum sharing and trading.
The Commission, which is meeting on Wednesday, may send back TRAI’s earlier suggestions for further discussions, sources close to the development told BusinessLine .
Over the last two days Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has been holding meetings with officials concerned on the issue. Prasad has instructed his officials to examine recommendations of TRAI, keeping in view the present and future market potential of the telecom sector.
“At the meetings it has emerged that the recommendations lack consensus at the DoT level and hence chances of being adopted as it is (recommended by TRAI) by the Commission is unlikely,” the senior official said.
As per the norms, in such a case, the recommendations have to go back to TRAI with proposed amendments by the Commission for review, the official said.
The final guidelines once notified would give a clear signal to the industry that has been demanding recommendations on spectrum sharing and trading even before the last spectrum auction began (before March this year).
Spectrum sharing will allow telecom companies to share their unutilised airwaves with other service providers in the same telecom circle – for instance, Vodafone sharing with Airtel in a circle (area) where it is not present and vice-versa.
Once trading is allowed, it will lead to efficient use of airwaves or radiowaves by enabling telecom operators, who have a lower subscriber base or unutilised spectrum, to trade in it.
At present, only the Government is allowed to allocate spectrum to telecom firms through auctions.
TRAI had last year recommended sharing of all categories of telecom airwaves held by operators including spectrum allocated at old price of ₹1,658 crore or assigned without auction. The regulator had also recommended allowing trading of spectrum.