Government sitting on huge chunk of spectrum: Trai ex-Chairman

NEW DELHI: Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) former Chairman Rahul Khullar has said that the government is sitting on huge chunk of spectrum, which could be utilized by the telecom operators for serving 10-20 times of their customer base.

"There is enough spectrum lying with the government departments such as the Railways, Doordarshan, etc and this spectrum is of no use there, the same could be used by the telecom operators for serving 10-20 times of their customer base," Khullar said during the launch of Brooking India papers on 'spectrum policy in India'.

Khullar also lashed out at the government for continuing with policy paralysis and not making any concrete announcements with regards to spectrum trading rules.

The Brookings India papers pointed out that one of the reasons for acute spectrum shortage in India is the large share of commercial spectrum held by the government departments and defense.

"This is unlike other parts of the world where, for example, NATO countries and several NATO allies have adopted the NATO-Band of the spectrum for their defense requirements, while the non-NATO and accomodates most of the commercial telecom in these countries."

Some countries, including India, have not adopted the NATO band for their defense spectrum requirements. This has resulted in a situaltion where the cost-effective commercial equipment bought by India from these countries fall in a non-NATO spectrum band of which a significant part of this overlaps with the Indian Defense spectrum bands. This is therefore a crucial reason leading to serious conflict of commercial public telecom services, the papers highlighted.

The Cabinet has approved swapping of 15MHz of 3G spectrum in 17 out of the 18 circles in the country between the Defence Ministry and the Telecom Ministry. This means that more spectrum would be available for commercial use. The government needs to create dialogues across the ministries of telecom, defense, and finance to resolve this problem.

Fragmented and inflexible rules need to be reformed so that businesses have more spectrum available for commercial applications. That will help India gain the benefits of new mobile solutions in education, healthcare, transportation, urban planning, and energy.