Expressing concern over the government?s move to allow intra-circle roaming pacts between mobile operators, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has written to the department of telecommunications (DoT), saying that the move could gravely affect the quality of service.
Trai chairman Nripendra Misra wrote to the DoT secretary, Siddartha Behura saying, ?in case of intra-service area (within a state) roaming, if the new service providers start their services without any/limited infrastructure, the network in which its subscribers will roam, will show an artificial and temporary upswing. This will create a situation where the spectrum with the new players will be lying unused while spectrum of the those whose network has been used for roaming facility will be heavily used. This may affect the quality of service and may also require a re-look at the present spectrum allocation methodology?.
The DoT had allowed mobile operators to enter into intra-circle roaming pacts in June. The move was expected to benefit regional players who are now expanding on a pan-India basis to roll out networks faster and save 30-40% capital expenditure. For the existing operators it would open a new revenue channel.
Under the move, operators such as Idea and Vodafone who aren?t present all over India but are increasing their presence were expected to be able to roll out faster and with lesser expenditure. When Idea starts rolling out in a new state like Bihar, if the company has initially rolled out its network only in a few districts, then in the time lag until which it completes its network in the entire circle, it can enter into roaming pacts with other service providers in that circle, to provide seamless communication to it customers, who might travel to other parts of the circle, where Idea hasn?t yet laid its network.