COIA rubbishes AUSPI's claim on spectrum allotment
New Delhi, Aug 13 (UNI) The country's GSM operators today shot off a letter to the Telecom Minister Andimuthu Raja urging him to look into allegations levelled by CDMA players that their rivals are not paying for the additional spectrum.
In the letter, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has rubbished the claim of the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUSPI) that there is a cap of 6.2 MHz spectrum for GSM operators.
Calling it a ''serious and baseless allegation'' against the Government, COAI has rubbished the claims made by AUSPI.
The letter stated that AUSPI and the CDMA operators have, during the last few weeks, been repeatedly hurling serious allegations against the government with regard to the Spectrum Policy, which has been in place for the last several years and is now demanding ''a high level enquiry'' into how 'additional' spectrum was given to GSM operators.
COAI Director General TV Ramachandran stated the Government has been allotting spectrum to the GSM operators as per license conditions and WPC guidelines as issued from time to time.
He also pointed out that the present method of spectrum allocations on the basis of ''usage, justification, availability'' has been practiced by the Government since many years consistently, through several ministers, heads of administration and wireless advisors.
He further emphasised that the prevalent policy has been even signed by the CDMA lobby that participated in this exercise in 2003 to determine subscriber-linked spectrum allotments and also future allocation of upto 15 MHz per GSM operator.
Mr Ramachandran stated that the CDMA operators were most welcome to seek an enquiry into the issue of allotment of additional spectrum as the policy had been formulated in an open and transparent manner with all the stakeholders.
Firing a fresh salvo on the CDMA operators, COAI has asked the government to probe into CDMA's entry to mobility services.
Mr Ramachandran requested the minister that as the issues of spectrum and mobility were ''joined at the hip'', any enquiry on spectrum should first examine how the CDMA operators got into mobility services.
In this regard, Mr Ramachandran referred to the 2003 Judgment of Justice D P Wadhwa, the then Chairman, TDSAT (and its only judicial member) who had held that ''the grant of limited mobile and use of handsets is not legal'' and had further gone on to direct that the licenses of the Fixed Service providers ''shall be revoked'' to the extent that they had been modified to allow limited mobility.
UNI