The department of telecommunications (DoT) has proposed that a telecom operator may be allowed to bid for spectrum only in the bands it currently operates in. This means that with the exception of Reliance Communciations and Tata Teleservices which provide both CDMA and GSM services, others would not be allowed to bid for spectrum in another technology band. Simply put, while RCom and TTSL can bid for either or both GSM and CDMA spectrum, a Bharti Airtel which offers only GSM services can only bid for GSM spectrum.
The telecom commission, the highest policy-making body in the DoT will take a final decision on this recommendation of a DoT committee at its meeting on September 3.
Meanwhile, the committee has also suggested that government should continue with the current practice of issuing a licence for each service area. ?At this stage, purely for the purpose of carrying out auction of the 800 and the 1800 mhz bands, DoT may consider service area level unified licence only,? the committee has proposed. While the telecom regulator had earlier proposed a district level licence and the National Telecom Policy 2012 has proposed a national level licence, both of these would create complications if adopted for the upcoming auctions, the panel has said. Accepting the revised net worth criteria of at least R100 crore as proposed by the telecom regulator the committee has said, ?the applicant shall have a minimum paid-up capital equal to one-tenth of net worth prescribed?.
Also, under the common UL, the committee has proposed that different bouquet of services can be designed so that the eligibility criteria and financial strength requirements are commensurate with the bouquet of services.
It has also suggested that in order to facilitate the objective of rural broadband penetration, internet service provider category C licence at the district level may be re-introduced and the entry fee for this category may be kept at Rs 1 lakh per district with an upper limit of Rs 15 lakh, same as that of category B.
