Trai chief questions whether all spectrum will continue to be auctioned

New Delhi: TRAI Chairman Rahul Khullar todaywondered whether all spectrum will continue to be sold through auction only for fear of CAG or CBI inquiries or the airwaveswill be easily available.

“Stage is for me to ask ourselves are we going tocontinue plugging this line that all spectrum must be auctioned. There should be no delicensing because there will be enquiry by CAG or CVC or CBI. Are we in business of building India or we sort of cowards covering our wounds,” he said while speaking at Assocham’s Mobile India Summit.

The CAG had alleged that government in 2008 allocated spectrum at less price which caused the national exchequer a notional loss of about Rs 1.76 lakh crore. The government had invited all-round criticism on 2G spectrum scam that was probed by CBI.

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The government is allocating spectrum for mobile services only through auction after the Supreme Court in February 2012 cancelled 122 2G licences and directed government to allocate spectrum through auction.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) chief said that it will be of no use to lay optical fibre in the country for broadband services without having enough spectrum.

“There is need for more spectrum. There is no point to lay fibre when no spectrum is available. I am talking of access spectrum,” Khullar said.

He said that there is a need to delicence (free spectrum) telecom spectrum to spread use of broadband.

“Why are we not delicensing more spectrum and in several bands. This is something on which we have already made recommendation on as far back as 2012 but unfortunately it did not make any progress,” Khullar said.

In 2012, TRAI had recommended to delicence (make free) 20 Mhz of spectrum between 1880-1900 Mhz frequencies for private and indoor use of telecom services.

TRAI Chairman said that there is also no progress on auction of 700 Mhz band– the most efficient spectrum for telecom services at present– for which the regulator has already given its recommendations.

Touching upon availability of spectrum with defence, Khullar urged that government department should end its stand-off and release spectrum that can be used for telecom services.

“There must be some end to this standoff between one department of government and the other that for security consideration we will not release whatever is lying. I am sorry, the world over all Ministry of Defence behave exactly the same way,” Khullar said.

There is some spectrum available with the Defence Ministry that can be used for mobile phone services. The Defence Ministry has agreed to vacate part of it once an alternate communication network is build and commissioned for it by Department of Telecom.

Under an agreement between Defence Ministry and the DoT, the Defence Ministry will vacate 25 megahertz (MHz) of 3G spectrum and 20 MHz of 2G in phases.

The Defence Ministry vacated 15 MHz of 3G spectrum, which was auctioned in 2010 fetching revenue of about Rs 67,700 crore to the exchequer. Defence also vacated 15 MHz of 2G spectrum, which was allocated to new operators.

Under the agreement, the remaining spectrum - 10 MHz spectrum in 3G and 5MHz in 2G - is to be vacated only after the Optical Fibre Cable network is completed.

PTI