The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will start allocation of spectrum for 2G services by the end of this year, mainly on the basis of the recent Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) recommendations.

According to DoT sources, out of Rs 13,000-15,000 crore, the department expects to earn Rs 7,500-8,000 crore (Rs 75-80 billion) from licence fees and the rest from allocating spectrum.

At present, the licence fee is around Rs 1,536 crore (Rs 15.36 billion) for a national telecom licence, that is, permission to operate in all 23 circles in the country.

Companies like BPL Mobile (22 circles), HFCL (21), Datacomp (22), Spice Communications (20), ByCell (5), Swan Telecom (14), Cheetah (2) and Parsvnath (22) have applied for licences. It remains to be seen how many of them get the licence and spectrum.

In financial year 2006-07, the exchequer earned Rs 2,090 crore (Rs 20.90 billion) as spectrum charges and Rs 6,360 crore (Rs 63.60 billion) as licence fees. It had collected Rs 1,028 crore (Rs 10.28 billion) in 2004-05 and Rs 1,367 crore (Rs 13.67 billion) in 2005-06.

Trai officials attribute this rise in the revenue to rapid growth in the country's wireless service segment.

Meanwhile, the DoT has started carrying out verification of the technologies the operators employ. The random check is to see if the technologies being used are sufficiently spectrum-efficient.

The DoT had earlier written to all GSM operators mandating use of spectrum-efficient techniques like synthesised frequency hopping, tighter frequency reuse plan, discontinuous transmission, in-building solutions and micro cells.

Apart from these, the DoT sought use of technologies like antenna-hopping, adaptive multi-rate (a speech coding technology), software that helps in decongesting networks, among others. It has asked the operators to respond by Monday with details of the technology they use. Moreover, it has asked the Wireless Monitoring Organisation (WMO) to conduct random verification or sample checks.

The WMO has to submit its report to the DoT by October 1 this year.