Auspi to invest Rs 53,000 cr by 2007-end for CDMA growth in India

New Delhi, Nov 8 (UNI) Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) supporter, Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers (AUSPI), while underlining the emergence of India as a key driver of CDMA growth, today said the expansion of this technology will see an estimated Rs 53,000 crore investment by December, 2007.

AUSPI has already invested Rs 39,000 crore as on September, 2006 on the expansion of the CDMA technology in India, and will invest Rs 53,000 crore by December next year on ramping up the number of CDMA subscribers from the current 37 million spread across 4,500 towns and cities to 75 million subscribers covering 5,500 towns.

The CDMA technology is experiencing close competition with the widely used GSM technology, even though it is growing much faster than the latter in the Indian market.

While hoping for a transparent, non discriminatory, technology neutral and judicious allocation of spectrum to all service providers equally, AUSPI plans to make available broadband wireless spectrum to existing UASL licensees only on circle basis as well as 200 MHz spectrum to meet growth requirement until 2007 and additional 100 MHz of spectrum by 2010.

''We hope that the spectrum policy will not be GSM-centric as has been in the past and we hope AUSPI and Cellular Operators Association of India are not found fighting over the spectrum issue, but are seen fighting it out in the market place,'' AUSPI's newly elected Vice President Ashok Sud told reporters here.

AUSPI, which is the representative industry body of Unified Access Service Licensees (UASL) providing telecom services in the country with CDMA technology, today also announced its newly elected president B B Anand and Vice President Ashok Sud, besides world-renowned vendors/technology developers Qualcomm, Lucent Technologies, ZTE Telecom and Huawei Telecommunications as its Associate Members for the first time.

''We will be closely working with the government to fulfil our plans,'' AUSPI Secretary General S C Khanna said.

For the quarter ended June, 2006, while the GSM technology grew by 13 per cent, the CDMA technology reported a 28 per cent growth according to figures released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

Worlwide, of the total 335 million CDMA subscribers, 143 million are in the Asia Pacific region which has the largest CDMA base, followed by 116 million in North America, 70 million in Caribbean and Latin America and 6 million in Europe, Middle east abd Africa.

AUSPI aims to achieve the national goal of 250 million phones by the end of next year, 500 million phones by 2010 and 600 million phones by the end of the 11th five year plan.

Besides, the organisation has also taken up the issue of the reduction of the revenue share license fee to 6 per cent, with the Ministries of Communications, IT and finance on Monday.

At present, the licence fee is upto 10 percent for circle A networks including metros like New Delhi and Mumbai.

On the issue of tele-density which has increased from 1 per cent to 15 per cent, Mr Khanna said, ''We are fully supporting the government in its infrastructure-sharing scheme under the USO fund so that goals of rural tele-density are also met alongwith overall goals of further enhancing the tele-density in India. To bridge the urban-rural divide, the cost to serve has to be reduced.'' UNI RA CS RAI1805