By IANS
New Delhi : The Delhi High Court Monday agreed to advance the date of hearing in the litigation over allocation of spectrum or radio frequency as demanded by GSM industry body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) to Jan 21 instead of Jan 31.
Justice Gita Mittal however refused to rule on the allocation process as demanded by COAI after the Additional Solicitor General informed the court that the entire process of allocation would take at least two months to complete.
The court was hearing an application filed by COAI seeking stay of Department of Telecommunication’s Jan 10 move to issue letters of intent to eligible new aspirants and allowing allotment of GSM technology spectrum to Reliance Communications.
The court also issued notices to the central government, Reliance communications, Tata Teleservices, Himachal Futuristic Communications Ltd and Shyam Telelink among others on the COAI application.
The court had earlier fixed Jan 31 as the date for hearing the petition filed by COAI that challenged DoT’s decision to allow dual technology and enhanced subscriber-linked criteria for spectrum allocation.
COAI had also sought quashing of the decision by Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal that on Dec 12 refused to stay the process of issuing new licences for offering mobile phone services in the country to those who had applied as on Sep 25 last year.
Prior to that, the government had announced new norms that allowed use of dual technology – CDMA and GSM – by a single operator in the same area of operations and had increased the minimum subscriber base for allocation of extra spectrum.
The COAI challenged the new norms after which the government set up an official panel to review the recommendations made by the Telecom Engineering Centre that oversees the radio frequencies in the country.
Radio frequency is the lifeline of the development and expansion of mobile phone industry in the country, especially in the wake of the country adding some seven to eight million new connections each month.