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Basic players unhappy with spectrum share

BS ICE Bureau

Far from ending all speculations and wrangles, the procedure for allocation of spectrum to the basic service operators announced by the government on Saturday has lead to further confusion and renewed threats of operators approaching the courts.

The confusion is among the 6 existing basic operators, some of whom have been given upto 10 Mghz spectrum, as to whether the limit of 2.5 Mhz set by the government would entail the operators to return the excess spectrum earlier allotted to them.

The policy announced envisages that any spectrum already allocated and not effectively used shall stand withdrawn and since most of the operators have no way fulfilled their rollout obligation they fear that the company would be asked to forfeit the spectrum given to them earlier.

The government had announced that initially the basic operators would be given only 2.5 Mhz. Subsequently another 2.5 Mhz will be allocated depending on the basic operators being able to meet the rollout obligations in terms of setting up of point of presence in the various SDCAs taking the total spectrum allocated to 5 Mhz.

The issue according to some of the basic operators could be a bone of contention leading to litigations being filed in civil courts in the coming days.

The Association of Basic Telecom Operators have been demanding a minimum of 5 Mhz spectrum initially while the government has linked the allotment of additional spectrum with meeting the roll out obligations by the basic operators.

"As compared to 5 Mhz spectrum a 2.5 Mhz allocation will lead to increase in our investments by almost 100 per cent. We will have to set up additional base stations to ensure that quality does not suffer because of low frequency band available to us." said a representative of the basic operators.

The other issue that is irking some of the existing basic operators is while they have had to bid for spectrum, the new operators --- as per the policy announced on Saturday --- will be given spectrum without any auction or bidding process.

"When we entered the basic services the department of telecom had conducted an auction where by we had taken a circle after proper bidding. Even the new fourth cellular operator being invited in each of the circle have been asked to bid for getting spectrum. So why is the new entrants in basic operations are being spectrum without any auction process?" said a basic operator in Northern India.

While the policy decision has visibly upset the basic operators it has also left rival camp cellular operators unhappy.

For them the main issue is the government has moved away from the earlier draft note which had envisaged a spectrum allocation of 1.25 Mhz.

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