The government announced a Rs 1000-crore (Rs 10-billion) project to convert wireless operations of defence services on Optical Fibre Cable, a move that is estimated to release 45 MHz of spectrum.
"We have begun the project involving officials from both ministry of telecom and defence. Department of Telecom would be spending Rs 1000 crore," J S Sarma, chairman, Telecom Commission and secretary, DoT, told reporters at a conference organised by Assocham.
Elaborating on the project, Sarma said BSNL would be the executing agency and the spectrum released would be allocated to operators for offering both 2G (existing mobile services) as well as 3G (next generation mobile services) services.
The project is likely to be completed in next two-three months, he added.
Asked whether this was part of DoT's long term plan to get spectrum vacated from defence services for which a high-powered Group of Ministers under Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee has been formed, Sarma said this was just analternate strategy to meet immediate demand.
GoM is yet to conduct its first meeting on this issue.
Sarma said getting spectrum from defence services was important but it will not be done at the cost of the security of the nation. "Security of the nation is paramount."
Sarma expressed concern over the quality of services and said availability of spectrum would bring some improvement espcially for operators having large number of subscribers across the country.
On the funding of Rs 1000 crore (Rs 10 billion) that whether BSNL and other private operators would also be contributing, Sarma declined to give details saying no final decision has yet been taken except that BSNL would be the executing agency.
On the proposed setting up of ombudsman to address the increasing grievences, he said single ombudsman by each operator may not be a viable solution and instead each operator should lay down a centralised system to address complaints from consumers.
He expressed optimism that the target of having 250 million telecom subscriber by 2007, would be achieved in much advance going by the current rate of adding new subscribers.
Sarma, however, said need of the hour was to bridge the gap between rural and urban areas and said the government was ready to give both passive and active subsidies to the operators for setting up infrastructure in rural areas from the Universal Service Obligation fund.
Endorsing Sarma's view, TRAI chairman Nipendra Misra urged the industry to address the issue of deteriorating quality of services and favoured the concept of ombudsman at the association level.
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