New Delhi, May 17: The committee set up by the Department of Telecom to review the spectrum allocation policy has suggested that no operator should be allowed to own more than 25 per cent of the total available radio frequency in a circle.
“A Unified Access Service licence holder cannot have spectrum holding of more than 25 per cent of the total assigned spectrum in the 2G spectrum bands in each licences service area, irrespective of mix technologies deployed.”
“Spectrum may be transferred/merged in any quantity any time after assignment subject to the condition that the merged entity cannot have spectrum holding of more than 25 per cent of the total assigned spectrum in the 2G bands in each circle,” the committee said in its report submitted to the Government last week.
Prevent hoarding
This will make merger and acquisition in the telecom sector even tougher. DoT officials said the move is aimed at preventing hoarding of spectrum by a single operator. The committee has also proposed to impose a spectrum transfer fee of Rs 550 crore for pan-India licence.
Initial cap
The committee has also capped the initial start-up spectrum to new players at 4.4 Mhz for GSM operators and at 2.5 Mhz for the CDMA operators. All fresh allocation after that will be done through auction. This will have an impact on the new players that got their licences in 2008. Operators, including Reliance Communication, Swan and Shyam Sistema, may not get any additional spectrum based on subscriber-linked criteria.
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