Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Monday announced its final recommendations on spectrum sharing for mobile operator in India.
If approved by the Cabinet, the main benefit will be to telecom operators such as Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone, Reliance Communications, etc.
TRAI said all access spectrum in the bands of 800 / 900 / 1800 / 2100 / 2300 / 2500 MHz will be sharable provided that both the licensees are having spectrum in the same band.
“Considering the fact that spectrum sharing results in additional quantity of spectrum with both the licensees to serve higher number of consumers, the SUC rate of each of the licensees post-sharing shall increase by 0.5 percent of AGR,” said TRAI.
TRAI noted that there are many licensees having administratively assigned spectrum in the 800 MHz, 900 MHz and 1800 MHz band.
“If any one of the two licensees, sharing their spectrum, has administratively assigned spectrum in that band, then after sharing, they will be permitted to provide only those services which can be provided through administratively held spectrum,” said TRAI.
If both the licensees are sharing that spectrum which has either been assigned through an auction in the year2010 or afterwards, or on which the licensee has already paid the prescribed market value (as decided by the Government from time to time) to the Government, they can offer services using all those technologies (GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, LTE, etc), which they can independently provide through their own spectrum holding.
A portion of additional capacitycreated needs to be counted for the purpose of applying the prescribed spectrum caps of 25 percent of total spectrum assigned and 50 percent in a band. For the limited purpose of applying the prescribed market caps, 50 percent of the spectrum held by the other license in the band being shared shall be counted as the additional spectrum being held by the licensee.