Following the principle of equality, as per the suggestion of Telecom Regulator Authority of India (TRAI), the Department of Telecom (DoT) has now decided to withdraw its earlier decision of allocating the bandwidths in 800 Mega Hertz (MHz) spectrum to Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) players in accordance with their subscribers base in the circles.
Now, DoT has decided to conduct the auction process in 3rd generation (3G) spectrum for (CDMA) players too as it has announced to do it for the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) players.
This decision of DoT came in the wake of TRAI advice that have notified DoT that if DoT allocate the 3G spectrum for CDMA players without the auction process, it would be against the ‘parity principles’ as now, some new players like Sistema-backed Shyam Telecom are also preparing to enter in this field. ‘It will be unfair for the new players who want to enter in this field as Reliance Communication (RCom) followed by Tata Tele Services (TTS) would be most benefited due their largest CDMA base,’ as TRAI suggested to DoT.
It is to mention here that earlier DoT had decided to conduct the bidding only for GSM players in 450 MHz, 800 MHz and 2.1 Giga Hertz (GHz) spectrum bandwidths as it usual does for GSM players. Some foreign players and existing CDMA players were also asking the rights to participate in the bidding, which has been granted by DoT.
Similarly, DoT has also announced to conduct the open bidding process that would be open for all including foreign players as well as existing GSM players who want to enter in this field, as per sources.
The Telecom Minister A Raja on Thursday in this regard announced that CDMA players too would have to bid for third-generation (3G) spectrum allocations. He also added that the auction process would likely to complete by the end of October and both CDMA and GSM players can roll out their service from this year.
Commenting on this decision, Raja said, “Initially there was lack of competition in the CDMA space, with just two players. Now with another player joining, the competition has escalated. Therefore, it will now be auctioned as per TRAI’s recommendations, instead of allocation given on the subscriber base.”
‘The auction process for GSM and CDMA will be going on simultaneously,’ added Raja.
The process of opening of bids would commence from September 22 as against the decided schedule of September 3, while the pre-bid conference meeting would also defer from August 27 to September 8.
But, Raja assured that there would be no delay in the date of identifying the agency.
According to TRAI, the third generation radio frequency may likely to be proved a power spectrum, and using this technology the operators can provide much better service to their users specially multimedia service including e-commerce, music video downloads, video telephony, low-cost voice calls, wireless broadband access to laptops and television on mobile devices such as handsets, smart phones and palm tops.
At present, there are three PAN India service Licence CDMA players in operation. These are: RCom, TTS, state run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) while Shyam telecommunication has also received service licence.
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