As operators weigh 3G pacts, licence lines blur

Some of India’s leading mobile telephony operators are apprehensive that their grand plans to combine resources to offer nationwide third-generation, or 3G, services may run into a regulatory roadblock — if the watchdog takes a different interpretation of existing norms around roaming, when applied to data services.

While Idea Cellular believes that intra-circle roaming is already prevalent in 2G and has explicit permission in the existing regulatory framework, another large carrier that features among the top three operators in the country, said that any such pact or agreement among operators for 3G spectrum sharing would require regulatory nod.

Yet another national carrier was not clear what form the agreement might take and how it will address issues around selling 3G services in circles where an operator is not authorised to use 3G spectrum.

The two national operators did not want to be named for the story.
While all the major carriers have pan-India 2G licence to operate across the country, none of the private cellular services provider has a pan-India 3G spectrum.

The lack of a pan-India presence has forced the competing firms to partner and cooperate to be able to provide premium high speed data services.

This will help the companies to generate alternate revenue streams to arrest sliding income from extremely low voice tariffs.

The operators who have won 3G spectrum in auctions held in last May have been in talks for at least six months now but has not been able to reach a comprehensive agreement yet.

Spokespersons for Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular said on Monday that they are in talks with other operators and hope to make an announcement soon but declined to give a time-line.

A DoT spokesperson did not respond to calls from DNA.
Vodafone, Reliance, Airtel and Idea have already launched 3G services in certain parts of the country, starting with urban areas first and expanding to other areas later.

Airtel has 3G spectrum in 13 telecom circles, while Idea has spectrum in 11 and Vodafone in nine.

“It will be a typical intra-circle roaming kind of model and does not require any new regulatory clearence,” Idea Cellular’s chairman and managing director Sanjeev Aga said on Monday while announcing his firm’s 3G launch in 10 towns spread across the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Himachal Pradesh.

In a typical intra circle roaming in 2G model, operator A enters into agreement with another operator to let their existing customers use the other operator’s network in areas operator A do not have network coverage.

However, unlike in 2G, the kind of agreement that operators are looking to enter for 3G would enable operator A to market their services in areas where they do not have 3G spectrum and where their existing licence do not authorise them to offer service on dedicated 3G spectrum in 2.1 GHz spectrum.

While 2G roaming was more of a stop gap arrangement to extend service to existing subscribers, the proposed 3G roaming would also allow operators to acquire customers in areas where they do not have spectrum.

After awarding the 3G spectrum, DoT had amended the Unified Access Services Licences (UASL) of operators only in respective circles where each won 3G spectrum, thus authorising them to use the 2.1GHz spectrum.

While agreeing that being cautious is justified when it comes to regulatory interpretation of such agreements, Kunal Bajaj, director at Indian operations of telecom consultancy Analysys Mason said that the existing UASL is technology agnostic and hence should technically be open to the kind of agreements that Indian operators are looking to enter.

Operators hope that existing UASL allows them to offer telecom services across country irrespective of technology used — meaning 2G or 3G — through roaming agreements.