COAI Walks Out Of Board On Spectrum

COAINew Delhi: The clash over spectrum took a new turn on Friday with the COAI, getting out of an official board for reexamining the frequency allotment conditions, saying that the board had a biased attitude and was neglecting all its ideas.

In a letter on Friday to committee chairman, R Bandhopadhyay, T V Ramachandran, the nominee of GSM players, said, “The Committee has either completely ignored our submissions or has cherry-picked our inputs and applied its own assumptions to arrive at incorrect conclusions without affording us any opportunity to refute the same.”

The Department of Telecom (DoT) framed up the board to develop fresh subscriber-lined spectrum allotment conditions after top GSM operators had gone to court over both telecom regulator Trai suggestions and also the Telecom Engineering Centre’s statement on this subject.

In addition to DoT additional secretary Bandhopadhyay, the group consists of wireless advisor to Department of Telecom, P K Garg; Prof Bhaskar Ramamurti, IIT-Chennai; and Dr Ajit Kumar Chaturvedi from IIT-Kanpur, among others.

Mr. Ramachandran said, “While the Committee has reputed academic and scientific authorities, it is most respectfully submitted that none of the Committee members have the required practical technical experience in running a cellular mobile network and it would be incorrect if this Committee too, were to review the criteria using only a theoretical approach.”

“It is apprehended that by refusing to involve network experts, the Committee would again be repeating the error made earlier, first by TRAI and then TEC. It is evident that the Committee is merely going through the motions of the process and is not intending or willing to either consider the inputs or address the concerns of the GSM industry,” he added.

While answering to COAI’s shift to draw out of this committee, the Association of Unified Service Providers of India (AUSPI) stated, “AUSPI is not surprised to learn that the COAI has decided to disassociate itself from the Spectrum committee constituted by the DOT to review spectrum allocation criteria in a scientific and practicable manner.”

“The committee itself was constituted because the COAI had been demanding repeatedly that the TEC criterion has been arrived at a non-transparent manner wherein COAI had not been associated. COAI has deliberately disassociated itself at the fag end of the committee’s deliberations when it is likely to give its final report.”

Business News: