Flaying most of the recommendations of the telecom regulator TRAI on spectrum, the cellular operators association of India in a presentation to the department of telecommunication argued that there should be no entry fee or one-time charge for 3G because as UAS licence entitles them to provide all types of mobile services including video conferencing.
The association, which represents GSM operators, also said any move to levy upfront lump sum fee for IMT-2000 spectrum would result in increase in cost of service, impeding the government's objective to reach out to rural areas and achieve the target of 250 million subscribers by 2007.
"The government may kindly consider that overall cap for spectrum usage charges be set at 2 per cent of revenues and within this overall cap of 2 per cent, the government may adopt a stepped approach (for both GSM & CDMA) of say increments of 0.2 or 0.25 per cent, for increased levels of spectrum allocation," it said.
"TRAI's recommendation of 'technology neutral' spectrum (allocation) will result in gross under utilisation of this scarce resource...This will give CDMA operators carte blanche to use their spectrum in the most inefficient manner and continue to install far lesser number of cellsites as compared to GSM operators, thus giving them a huge cost advantage."
On TRAI's recommendation to allocate 450MHz to CDMA players, the COAI said whenever 450MHz band is opened up, it should be equally available to GSM as well as CDMA operators and 1800MHz band should not be available to CDMA operators merely at their request.
It said CDMA operators should also be subject to a subscriber-linked criteria for assignments from the 1800MHz band.
COAI further said additional spectrum will give the CDMA operators a backdoor entry into 3G. CDMA 20001x EVDO, which is 3G for CDMA, can be offered in 800 MHz, but requires a separate carrier to offer data only services.
3GSM (W-CDMA) in India, can only be offered in 2GHz band. TRAI is aware that since early 2004, CDMA operators have been demanding additional carrier to offer data/CDMA 2000 1x EVDO, COAI noted.
It is apprehended that in the garb of technology neutrality, it is being recommended that CDMA operators be given surplus spectrum so that they can set aside a separate carrier for EVO, thus facilitating their selective and
preferential entry into 3G through the backdoor, it said.
COAI said TRAI spectrum suggestions constitute a triple violation of NTP-99, NFAP-2002 and Trai Act.
Supporting continuation of the subscriber linked- approach for spectrum allocation, COAI said the capacity of GSM and CDMA, the investment in infrastructure made by both of them and the use of capacity enhancement techniques by both should also be taken into account while allocating spectrum.
