Firms bat for reconfiguring of airwaves with these owners; better spectrum availability to improve service quality
Faced with severe crunched for spectrum, telecom operators are eyeing close to 116.5 megahertz (MHz) airwaves held by the defense sector, broadcasters and state-owned BSNL to expand their network and improve the quality of their service.
These spectrum, which are in the 2,100 MHz, 900 MHz, 700 MHz and 800 MHz bands, have been lying idle with their present owners or will be rendered idle once they shift to new technology.
Rajan Mathew, director general of Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), said while telecom companies were struggling to maintain and improve the quality of their service with the current quantity of spectrum available with them, there were many who were sitting on spectrum that are not being utilised.
"There is ample spectrum that can be freed but nobody is ready to vacate. There is a need to look at whether there was a way to reconfigure their (those agencies where airwaves are lying idle) holding for optimal use and globally harmonise the frequencies," he said.
According to him, defense had close to 15MHz in the 2,100 MHz that could be vacated while another 100 MHz in the 700 MHz could be freed from broadcasting firms which were moving to digitisation and 1.5 MHz of unused spectrum in the 900 MHz could come from BSNL.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has also recommended in its report submitted to the Department of Telecom to free up idle spectrum for the commercial usage by telecom service providers from these sectors.
Individual operators in India gets allocated roughly 15-20% of spectrum compared with that allocated to their peers in advanced countries. India has about 265MHz of spectrum across all the bands, while the US, Europe and Brazil have between 450 to 600 MHz allocated. In the 1800 MHz, Europe has at least 2 to 2.5 times more spectrum allocated compared to India.
G Krishna Kumar, vice president in the Mobile and Connected Devices Division at Bangalore-based Symphony Teleca, said better spectrum availability with telecom operators will improve the quality of service that can be offered to the consumers. Simply put, it would mean there would be lesser call drops and better internet connection.
He believes the government would do well to consider the License Shared Access ( LSA) technology that helps in efficient use of unused spectrum between license holders. This system has already been piloted in Europe.
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