By IANS
New Delhi : The government Wednesday said it would not allocate spectrum to any telecom player until the technical panel of Department of Telecommunications (DoT) issues guidelines on Oct 30.
“Till the report from the TEC (Telecom Engineering Centre) arrives, no spectrum would be allocated,” Communications and Information Technology Minister A. Raja told reporters here, adding that TEC guidelines are expected on Oct 30.
Last week, DoT approved the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) decision that subscriber-linked criterion would be the basis for frequency allocation. However, DoT had asked TEC to “further” study the proposal.
Meanwhile, the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) Wednesday stayed its decision on spectrum allocation and postponed hearing of the petition filed by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), an industry body of GSM mobile operators, till Nov 12.
However, TDSAT did admit that the decision taken by DoT to allow CDMA operators to rollout GSM mobile phones services was done in “undue haste and the process was flawed”, according to industry sources.
In the meantime, sources said, COAI Wednesday has also written a letter to DoT secretary D.S. Mathur, urging that one of its representative be included in TEC.
“We would like to hereby request that a representative of COAI be formally nominated on the above committee and that the representative be fully involved in the deliberations of the committee including preparation and signing off on the final report that will be submitted to the government,” the letter stated.
“We would like to reiterate our submission that the current exercise be carried out transparently and separately for both GSM-based as well as CDMA-based cellular mobile services, as mobile services are now being provided on both standards and norms, assumptions and efficiency standards must be equated,” it added.
On Tuesday, COAI filed a petition at TDSAT challenging the government’s move that allows CDMA players to enter the GSM segment.
“The DoT made unseemly haste when such allotments were not permissible and thus, such applications are ipso facto illegal,” the petition had said.