Dec 08: Despite of bitter controversy over government’s spectrum policy, Ministry of Communications & IT, Department of Telecommunications on Friday has granted the PAN India GSM licence to Anil Ambani backed Reliance Communication to begin its GSM technology based service in the remaining 14 circle where its CDMA services are already functioning under Reliance Telecommunications brand.
Though government has not decided yet to finalise its spectrum policy to provide new spectrums to all GSM service providing companies include Reliance, yet it has said, “The changes in licencing norms is subject of availability of spectrum”. For providing the licence to Reliance Communications, government has to made several changes into the Unified Access Services Licence (UASL) that will allow Reliance to begin its GSM services in rest of its 14 circles across the country to cover maximum mass.
Reliance has filed an application for granting a pan-India licence based on GSM technology to begin its services in remaining 14 circles and deposited Rs. 1,651 crore in Department of Telecommunication on October 19. However the other GSM operators are opposing government’s decision to provide dual facility to a single organisation.
Reliance Communication operates India’s biggest CDMA services in its all 22 circles covering the entire nation, while it’s subsidiary Reliance telecommunication offers its services in eight circles including whole Chhattisgarh and some portion of Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.
After getting government’s licence, RCOM will still have to wait for granting allocation of GSM spectrum measuring 4.4 MHz for its each circle to launch operations commercially. On the other hand, India’s major GSM operators Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular have challenged the DoT policy to issue fresh spectrum allocation to Reliance.
In this response DoT has said, “RCOM will be allotted spectrum only after existing licence holders that have applied for a pan-India licence for granting spectrum.”
|
|
Comments:
