By IANS
New Delhi : The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), a body representing GSM technology based telecom players, Wednesday opposed CDMA operators’ demand of granting equal bands of radio frequencies to all.
COAI has written to chairman of the spectrum review panel, R. Bandhopadhyay, demanding that frequency distribution to CDMA operators should be further slashed to one fourth of what GSM operators will be allotted.
This comes a day after Tata Teleservices (TTSL), one of the leading CDMA players, demanded that both GSM and CDMA should be given equal amount of spectrum.
Calling the demand by TTSL “grossly wrong and untenable”, the GSM body said “COAI have always been stating that the spectrum capacity rule of 1:2 being followed for CDMA-GSM is extremely lenient to CDMA and needs to be tightened by at least 100 percent to 4:1.”
On Tuesday, Anil Sardana, managing director, TTSL, said: “It is very dismaying that the proposal again talks about spectrum allocation which is 2:1 in favour of GSM.”
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had Monday proposed that 10 MHz of frequency would be given to GSM operators and 5 MHz for those offering their services based on CDMA technology.
By doing so, the DoT went back on its own suggestion made earlier regarding subscriber-based allocation, which would have enabled operators to get more than 6.2 MHz.
TTSL and Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Communications (RCOM) are the major players in CDMA services while Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea are the dominant players in the GSM segment.
State-run BSNL also has a major presence in the GSM segment with ambitious plans in the CDMA market as well.
In a related development, the telecom tribunal Wednesday rejected COAI’s affidavit in which the latter had blamed the government for changing the spectrum allocation policy in a clandestine manner.
The tribunal will be hearing the case again Dec 12.