RCOM, Tatas oppose proposal to auction extra airwaves

Telecom majors Reliance Communications (RCOM) and Tata Teleservices have opposed a proposal to auction all additional airwaves to service providers made by a panel comprising industry, scientists and government officials . These operators, who recently launched GSM-based services, have also opposed the panel’s proposal to uniformly charge 3% of a telecom company’s annual revenue as a levy for using airwaves . The panel had proposed that only the start-up spectrum — the minimum radio frequencies required to launch mobile services — should be given free to existing telcos. Currently, operators, who use GSM technology , get 4.4 MHz as start-up airwave , while those on CDMA platform get 2.25 MHz. So, if the panel’s recommendation is accepted, all allocation beyond this will only be through auction. That will raise the cost of acquiring airwaves for all recent entrants, putting them at a disadvantage against older players, who got extra airwaves based on their subscriber base. The Association of Unified Service Providers of India (AUSPI), the industry body representing telcos such as RCOM and Tata Teleservices, in a letter to the department of telecom (DoT) said several courts have ruled that telecos have the right to get up to 6.2 MHz of airwaves free. “Any recommendation that allocates spectrum beyond 4.4 MHz through auctions will not be legally tenable, in addition to going against previous policies of DoT and recommendations of regulator Trai,” it added. Currently, India is the only country in the world that follows the controversial practice of allocating spectrum based on companies’ subscriber base. AUSPI has pointed out that most incumbent GSM operators have already been allotted spectrum between 8-10 MHz and these were made on subscriberlinked criteria. It has argued that the government can not have a ‘new’ auction policy for recent entrants in GSM services .