Telecom Roundup: 25Mhz – November; Licence Rules In 10 Days; Preferential Treatment For BSNL?

While Telecom Minister A Raja has announced around 25 Mhz of spectrum will be made available by the Defence ministry by November, GSM and
CDMA operators are squabbling over who gets first use, reports the Hindu. COAI, the GSM association, claims that since they have a larger subscriber base and had applied first, they should get first use, while AUSPI, the CDMA association, believes that the government should allocate only 6.2 Mhz to existing operators.

It’s not that they’re just competing amongst themselves, though. CIOL reports that the COAI wants a strict scrutinization of licences, and for “fortune hunters” to be weeded out. They’ve “recommended” a five year lock-in, and a revenue sharing model of around 10 percent for auctioning spectrum to existing players. The Telecom Minister has said that a committee for finalizing the new rules for awarding licences will submit its report in 10 days.

Update: We had reported in June that the defence forces were going to release around 42 Mhz of spectrum, and 3G policy was going to finalized by July. While the policy still hasn’t been finalized, there are now reports that BSNL, which was struggling with the limited spectrum it has was given an additional 10 Mhz spectrum over 16 circles sometime between March and July. The GSM operators are obviously up in arms over this preferential treatment. More here.

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