By IANS
New Delhi : A day ahead of a crucial meeting on how the government should allot frequencies to telecom operators, Bharti Airtel chief Sunil Mittal sharply criticised the way parameters were drawn to allot this scare resource.
“Government must set its mathematics right. Ignorance is not an excuse to change the norms,” Mittal told reporters on the sidelines of the India-European Union Business Summit, joining other GSM mobile operators on the issue.
He cautioned that arbitrary decisions could hurt the sentiments of investors and affect inflow of funds in this high-growth area. “Foreign investment played a key role in the growth of telecom sector and they are worried,” he said.
Mittal’s remarks come just ahead of a crucial meeting here between telecom operators and an expert panel of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), which is mandated to recommend how scarce frequencies can be allotted to service providers.
Senior officials of DoT officials and the Telecommunications Engineering Centre (TEC), the technical arm of the DoT, are also scheduled to attend this meeting here Friday, as the ministry tries to resolve the issue amicably.
The allocation of frequency or spectrum has been a raging controversy in the industry, dividing the telecom operators between those who offer their services based on CDMA or GSM technologies.
The matter has got enjoined with the issue of granting additional licences for telecom services – for which 575 applications have been received by the DoT from 45 companies – since it will entail further apportionment of spectrum.