The Hindu Business Line : Spectrum panel meet fails to resolve allocation issue

What they say
Mr Sunil Mittal said that Bharti had challenged TEC’s allocation norms with evidence and data.
Mr Anil Ambani said the Government should ask the existing players to give back excess spectrum.
Mr Rajiv Mehrotra said that GSM operators should be asked to deploy technologies such as pico cells to get maximum efficiency.

Kamal Narang

No meeting point: Mr Anil Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Communications, coming out after the DoT meeting on spectrum issue with the company officials iin the Capital on Monday. —

Our Bureau

New Delhi, Nov. 26 The deadlock between the Government and the various factions within the telecom industry over allocation of spectrum continues even as the panel set up by the Communications Ministry met top representatives of mobile companies on Monday in a bid to resolve the issue.

The Bharti Group Chairman, Mr Sunil Mittal, the Reliance Communications Chairman, Mr Anil Ambani, and the Vodafone Group’s CEO, Mr Arun Sarin, were among those who made presentations before the committee headed by Mr R. Bandhopadhayay, Additional Secretary, Department of Telecom. The panel, comprising industry representatives, and technical experts from Indian Institute of Technology and C-DoT, was set up to review the subscriber-based spectrum allocation criteria prescribed by the Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC).

Mr D.S. Mathur, Secretary, DoT, had also met the telecom chiefs last week to thrash out a compromise.

Operators’ stance

While existing GSM operators have objected to the implementation of the new norms on the grounds that the numbers suggested were unrealistic, new players in the GSM segment waiting to get spectrum including Reliance, HFCL and Shyam, have supported the Government’s move to increase the subscriber base criteria.

Mr Mittal was the first to meet the panel. He said that Bharti had challenged TEC’s allocation norms with evidence and data. “We have challenged TEC and TRAI norms for subscriber-linked criteria and told them (the panel) scientifically that it is not correct. We know how to run networks and ignorance cannot be used for changing norms for subscriber criteria. I think that we have presented our case very well,” Mr Mittal said after the meeting.

He also told the panel that the Government cannot question the GSM operators as far as spectral efficiency is concerned.

However, the rival camp led by Mr Ambani pointed out that GSM operators were not eligible for more than 6.2 Mhz spectrum and the Government should ask the existing players to give back excess spectrum.

Mr Ambani had also met the TRAI Chairman, Mr Nripendra Misra, earlier in the day to push his point.

Mr Rajiv Mehrotra, Chairman, Shyam Telecom, gave a technical presentation to the spectrum panel on how GSM operators can manage the numbers prescribed by TEC with the given spectrum. Mr Mehrotra said that GSM operators should be asked to deploy technologies such as pico cells to get maximum efficiency and that the Government should not come under pressure by claims of huge investment loss by GSM companies.

Panel meet

The panel will meet again on November 30 for the last time before submitting its report to the Communications Ministry. The findings of the panel will be used by the Government to make its final policy decision on spectrum allocation.