Telecom Regulator May Revise Pricing Of 700 MHz Spectrum
Telecom regulator R S Sharma defended the high reserve price of the premium spectrum bands like 700 MHz but expressed his “willingness” to have a relook at the issue of pricing.
Mr Sharma, chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said, “Look the figure of 5.6 lakh crores was not a target as such. It was the value of spectrum that was calculated on the availability and the calculations were done on the various accepted models.”
On October 1, the government had offered 2354 megahertz of spectrum for sale through a process of online auction. Based on the reserve price of various bands of spectrum, the government had calculated that it would earn Rs. 5.6 lakh crores. And nearly 4 lakh crores were to come from the sale of the premium 700 MHz airwaves.
The reserve prices for all the bands were recommended by TRAI. However, the premium 700 MHz band — offered for the first time ever and considered to be an ideal band for high-speed internet and data services — remained unsold.
Asked if the TRAI as willing to relook at the pricing, Mr Sharma said, “We arrived at the figure after a process of consultation. Hypothetically speaking if the governments asks us to relook, we will consider it.”
Mr Sharma also spoke about the ongoing tussle between Reliance Jio and other telecom operators over issues such as predatory pricing and call failures.
He also said that the regulator has issued “directions to all operators to follow compliance norms with regard to call failures.”
“It is not about operator A or operator B. As a consumer, I should be able to make calls to anyone,” Mr Sharma added, “we had studied the call failures on a daily basis from September 15 to 19 and the report was not satisfactory at all.”
Last month, Reliance Jio has complained that 52 crore calls were failing daily on their network as existing operators had not provided adequate number of ports of interconnects (POI) or a gateways that help connect between two different telecom networks.
Kindly send reply or comments on this topic to [email protected]
Source:NDTV
TRAI
