The government has finally moved a step ahead on the issue of vacation of spectrum from the defence services for the use of telecom service providers. The first meeting of the group of ministers (GoM) on Friday decided to form a sub-committee headed by National Security Advisor M K Narayanan to assess the areas and frequency of spectrum bands which could be vacated. Department of telecommunications (DoT) secretary D S Mathur and defence secretary Vijay Singh will also be members of the committee, which would submit its report within a 7 to 10 days.
The GoM is headed by the external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee, with defence minister A K Antony, IT and communications minister A Raja, finance minister P Chidambaram, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, information and broadcasting minister P R Dasmunsi and home minister Shivraj Patil as its members. The GoM met on Friday for the first time after being constituted more than a year back. The committee would also be assisted by two directors of the wireless planning and coordination (WPC) wing of the DoT, which manages spectrum.
Sources said the next meeting of the GoM and the road map of vacation of spectrum would be finalised once the sub-committee headed by Narayanan submits its report.
The DoT had called for vacation of 45 Mhz spectrum by the defence in the 1,800 Mhz for GSM-based 2G services and 35 Mhz in 2.1 Ghz band for GSM-based 3G services. The DoT has also maintained that since frequencies for the defence wireless network concerned were authorised in phases, as a pragmatic approach it should be possible to release it in phases as the alternative optic fibre network is build-up.
In an internal report recently, the DoT had also raised an alarm saying if spectrum is not vacated fast the growth of the telecom sector could get stalled.