Telecom Lead India: Telecom Commission will meet on May
24 to discuss TRAI’s latest recommendations on spectrum auction.
These are not just any recommendations, they’ve come
from the regulator. Therefore, they have to be dealt with seriously. The
regulator’s recommendations are taken as a starting point for a future roadmap
on policy. Only if there are good reasons not to agree with them, we can take a
different view,” said DoT secretary R Chandrasekhar.
Chandrasekhar said that the recommendations had to be
deftly combed through and the fine print, along with all details, would have to
be diligently analyzed since the regulator has explained its stand on a number
of issues raised by the telecom department, according to a report in Economic
Times.
A committee in the DoT will study these and then
proposals will be placed before the Telecom Commission and a view will be
taken.
Telecom regulator TRAI, in its modified proposals, left
most of earlier recommendations regarding GSM spectrum auction unchanged. TRAI
stuck to its earlier stand that these recommendations would not increase call
rates by more than 4 paise per minute.
The telecom regulator maintained its auction
recommendation for airwaves at nearly 13 times the price of spectrum allotted
in 2008. It also increased spectrum usage charge while reducing the initial bid
price for airwaves used by CDMA technology companies and increasing auctionable
GSM airwaves by 2.5 Mhz.
Some changes that the regulator suggested included
auctioning 10 Mhz of spectrum in circles where more than 5 MhZ was available
after reserving spectrum for auction and refarming. If there were more than
four registered bidders in a circle, then this 10 Mhz would be auctioned in
eight blocks of 1.25 Mhz each where incumbents can take two blocks and new
operators can take four blocks.
CII supports Indian telecom demands for cutting spectrum base
price
Recently, CII said reserve price for spectrum auction is
extremely high and will hurt national interest, inclusive growth and will be
detrimental to the growth of the telecom industry. At present juncture,
the auction of only 2G spectrum should be considered to comply with the Supreme
Court’s decision.
editor@telecomlead.com
