Spectrum war spreads to both houses

After courtrooms and corridors of government ministries, the spectrum war is now playing out in both the houses of Parliament.

The winter session, which started on November 19, has already taken note of more than 20 questions related to spectrum. These questions have been asked by MPs cutting across party lines over three days — two days allocated to the communications ministry in Rajya Sabha and one in Lok Sabha.

Apart from queries on the Central Bureau of Investigation’s recent raid on the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) over allocation of 2G spectrum to some companies, MPs have also shown keen interest in the upcoming 3G auction.

On 2G, the questions asked were around the pending applications, expected recommendations by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on pricing of spectrum, government approval granted to Unitech for increasing foreign holding in its telecom entity, the spectrum allocation scam and the recent High Court ruling on spectrum allocation.

As for 3G, MPs wanted details on the spectrum vacation by Defence Forces, the precise auction date, reasons for the delay in auction till now, progress of the 3G service of state-owned telcos BSNL and MTNL (who were allotted 3G spectrum earlier this year) and disparity in 3G slots across the country.

In addition to spectrum, per-second billing also figured in the list of questions. Per-second billing was started by Tata DoCoMo, and was subsequently picked up by other telcos. MPs sought details on the ‘pulse war’ among the telcos.

Another interesting question that came up in the Rajya Sabha was on whether there were government guidelines on giving frequent appointments by ministers, secretaries and the cabinet secretary to industrialists. The question was with reference to Anil Ambani’s recent meetings with power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and minister for IT and telecom
A Raja. An MP even sought to know how many times Ambani met these two ministers and top officials of these ministries in the past six months.

Spectrum or airwave is a scarce natural resource that enables telecom companies to offer quality service to their subscribers. It must be among the most-searched words since the IT & telecom minister A Raja and DoT came under the scanner over the alleged improper allocation of 2G spectrum to some telcos on a first-come-first-served basis. Rather than opt for the auction process, the government chose to give away 2G spectrum bundled with pan-India licence for just Rs 1,651 crore.

The Opposition called it a Rs 60,000-crore scam, as the National Exchequer is believed to have lost that much owing to the first-come-first-served route taken by the DoT.