Govt to review spectrum allocation policy

New Delhi, Aug 24: With telecom operators increasingly resorting to inflating their subscriber base, the government today said it is actively considering a shift in spectrum policy.

The new policy now will be based on the number of calls originating from a network and not on the amount of customers.

''We are considering spectrum allocation policy which will be based on the number of calls and not on the basis of number of subscribers,'' said Minister of State for Communications and IT Shakeel Ahmad on the sidelines of 'WiMax India 2007' international conference here.

There have been reports where the operator have shown an inflated number of subscribers, he added.

Currently, the spectrum allocation is based on the number of subscribers with any operators.

Dr Ahmad said the Government is determined to allocate spectrum to telecom operators and interested parties but the previous experience regarding allocation was not very encouraging.

''Some of the operators who got the spectrum did not utilise it effectively as the government wanted them to,'' Dr Ahmad said.

On broadband connections, he said, the government launched an initiative in January 2005 to cover 200 towns in an year. Till today, over 1,000 towns have been covered with about 2.5 million connections and the Government has set a goal of creating 20 million broadband connections by 2010 and doubling the rural teledensity to 15 per cent from the current seven per cent.

Mr Ahmad said WiMax is a preferred technology which is high speed cost effective and roll out very fast.

''We are in discussion with the Defence Ministery to get the spectrum in order to meet the demand,'' he said.

TRAI in its recommendations mentioned that new technology has the potential to deliver above four Mbps over long distances in a fixed point-to-point or point-to-multipoint configuration, thus should be encouraged.

He said the successful WiMAX deployment will largely depend upon the availability and suitability of spectrum resources.

There is no uniform global licensed spectrum for WiMAX.

Replying to a question, Mr Ahmad said, unsolicited calls from telemarketers will end by September 5.

Cellphone users can register their numbers with the do-not-call registry if they do not want to receive telemarketing calls and SMS.

UNI