The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has written a letter to R Chandrashekhar, secretary, department of telecom over the issue of 3G spectrum sharing between mobile phone service providers in the country.

In the letter dates 20, 2011, the TRAI said that some private telecom operators have started offering 3G services in telecom circles where they did not have any allotted spectrum and thus did not pay any license fee. Roaming arrangements were meant to allow operators to offer seamless connectivity to their subscribers through out the country.

Only telecom operators including, MTNL and BSNL paid money for an all-India licence for offering 3G services amounting to Rs17,000 crore. Private operators including Bharti Airtel, Idea, Vodaphone, Reliance Telecom, Tata Teleservices, Aircel had bid for selective circles and had paid only for circles allotted to them.

After the bidding process, the private firms joined together to offer services in each other’s circles to cover areas where they had lost out on the bidding. TRAI believes that the operators are offering these services “using intra-service area roaming arrangement”, which is a violation of the terms and conditions of the license.

TRAI says that “it has come to the notice of authority that some service providers viz. M/s Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular Limited and Aircel Limited are offering 3G services even in those service areas where 3G spectrum has not been allocated to them.”

TRAI said that such arrangements are not favorable on economic as well as technical grounds and thus should be opposed. Meanwhile, the DOT has asked the watchdog for fresh recommendations on M&As, following telecom minister Kapil Sibal's recent statement that the telecom sector is too fragmented.