The Hindu Business Line : DoT asks Reliance to surrender excess spectrum

THE Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has asked Reliance Infocomm to surrender excess radio frequency in Haryana on grounds that the company had not reached the required level of subscriber base.

While the company is yet to receive an official communication, the Wireless Planning and Coordination (WPC) wing of DoT has told the private operator to give up the excess spectrum allocated to it specifically in the city of Ambala.

Senior Government officials said that Reliance was allocated the additional radio frequency after receiving an application from the company stating that it had crossed the two-lakh subscriber mark in Ambala and, therefore, it required more spectrum. However, the company has not yet crossed that number in the whole State of Haryana.

Reliance sources said that the company had not received any official communication and the company had no intentions of keeping excess spectrum if that was the case. Sources said that if the company had wanted to take additional spectrum by giving false numbers, it would have done so in more important markets like Delhi and Mumbai and not Ambala.

This is the second instance when the DoT has asked an operator to give up excess spectrum. Earlier this year,

The DoT had asked Tata Teleservices to give up 2 mega-hertz (Mhz) of spectrum in the Maharashtra circle.

The company was using this spectrum in Mumbai and Pune. It had received about 7 Mhz of radio frequency in Maharashtra circle as per the terms of the old licence conditions of basic services.

However, the new licences specify that code division multiple access (CDMA) based mobile operators cannot hold on to more than 5 Mhz of radio frequency.

Meanwhile, CDMA-based operators led by the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUTSPI) have been demanding a relaxation on the cap on the spectrum limit.

They point out that while global system for mobile communications (GSM) based cellular operators get spectrum up to 15 Mhz, CDMA operators are entitled to only 5 Mhz.

"After having spent more than Rs 20,000 crore as investment for laying the infrastructure and having paid the same licence fee as the fourth GSM operator, CDMA operators are still required to prove to our competitors that we need additional spectrum. This is not in line with the principles of competition and healthy development of a competitive environment," AUTSPI had said in a letter to DoT.

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