Corporate giant Tatas on Tuesday asked the government to seek surrender of excess spectrum lying with GSM operators, a line being aggressively pursued by Reliance Communications [Get Quote] chief Anil Ambani.

With this, the top two CDMA players have joined forces against GSM operators like Bharti and Vodafone to seek return of spectrum beyond the contractual amount of 6.2 Mhz.

Rejecting a settlement package proposed by the Department of Telecom, Tata Teleservices [Get Quote] managing director Anil Sardana said: "It is very dismaying that the proposal again talks about spectrum allocation which is 2:1 in favour of GSM.

"It is this very cause, which has pushed CDMA players to move towards GSM as the frequency allocation to GSM has been very liberal."

The GSM operators had also virtually rejected the proposal by DoT Secretary D S Mathur, even as a public interest litigation was filed in the Supreme Court seeking to ensure that decisions on spectrum allocation and use of dual technology were taken in a transparent manner.

In a statement, Sardana said: "The differentiation between GSM and CDMA technology must end; There must be strict adherence to the government's stated policy of technology neutrality.

"This means that GSM and CDMA operators must receive the same amount of upfront spectrum and same amount of contracted spectrum for which the government should change licence conditions immediately, lest the stated position of government would see 'NO' interest in particular technology and interest in the other."

For the same number of customers that Tata now has, some of the large GSM operators had more than double the spectrum when they (Tatas) held same spectrum by virtue of which GSM operators have saved thousands of crores of capital investment.

"TTSL therefore is of strong opinion that its time that such telecom service providers be asked to surrender additional spectrum beyond the contractual amount of 6.2 MHz. Re-farmed spectrum should be given to the crossover technology operators, new operators and operators waiting spectrum since December 2006," Sardana said.

DoT had offered, at its meeting on Monday, that GSM players be given maximum of up to 10 MHz while CDMA only 5 MHz and also asked them to accept telecom regulator TRAI's recommendations on subscriber criteria for additional airwaves and for revenue percentage. TTSL has rejected this.