CDMA players slam DOT report on spectrum

CDMA operators on Tuesday slammed a report of the DoT spectrum committee on airwave allocation, saying it is 'highly inclined' in favour of the GSM operators whose observations and recommendations should not be taken as the telecom industry's views.

"All the incumbent GSM operators (like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular) and COAI have taken shelter in the DoT second spectrum committee report which is highly inclined in their favour and hence their support and observations are not a correct replica of the industry and cannot be viewed from a neutral point of view," they said in comments to a consultation paper floated by Trai.

The telecom regulator, which is gearing up to bring in new regulations that will allow mobile phone firms to buy each other out and trade in spectrum, had floated the paper seeking stakeholders' views on this, besides several other issues.

Locking horns with the GSM lobby group COAI, Association of Unified Service providers of India said the regulator should put a cap on spectrum allocation in 2G beyond the contracted amount.

"There should be a spectrum cap of 2 X 5 MHz for CDMA and 2 X 6.2 MHz for GSM; out of which 2 X 2.2 MHz of GSM spectrum should be capped in the 900 MHz band," AUSPI said.

It said re-farming of spectrum was essential as the 900 MHz band requires very less capital expenditure compared to other bands and this advantage should be given equally to the new operators.

Besides, it added that the maximum spectrum per entity should be determined based on the principle of ensuring fair distribution of spectrum among all operators.

The spectrum policy should prevent hoarding, especially by allocation of spectrum beyond contractual limits, or else, it will lead to market cartelization.

The spectrum committee report recommended that any 2G spectrum beyond 4.4 MHz for existing licence-holders should be auctioned and not linked to the number of subscribers. This was also endorsed by the COAI.

So far, 2G licences have come with start-up spectrum of 4.4 MHz and additional airwaves are given based on the number of subscribers.

The mobile sector has incumbents' network which are having GSM spectrum allocated beyond the contracted amount of 2 x 6.2 MHz for GSM.

New network operators have been denied full quota of 2 x 6.2 MHz of contracted amount of spectrum as per the license agreement. Here it is clearly favouring the incumbent operators at the cost of new operators which need to be corrected.

On the issue of charging operators having spectrum beyond contracted 6.2 MHz, the AUSPI said extra airwaves should be withdrawn and charges should be levied from the time of extra spectrum was alloted to them till it was used.