New Delhi: Both BSNL and MTNL strike back at Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Mittal, who had protested the move for assigning spectrum to PSU’s as it believed that the tough standards would weaken the performing spheres.

Mr. Mittal also demanded the administration to pull out the added radio frequencies apportioned to them.

BSNL’s chairman and managing director, Kuldeep Goyal said that the company has already been given the rights to use the spectrum, and added that the remarks given by Mr. Mittal that the PSU was using spectrum in an inefficient manner were unjustifiable.

He also told that the BSNL was analyzing the possibility of providing up complete range of CDMA services with the government’s authorization of dual technology.

Mr. Goyal said, “We will set up about 10,000 wireless towers for the CDMA network within a year if we decide to go in for full-fledged CDMA services.”

He also rejected any capitulation of 2G spectrum as asked by Mr. Mittal.

Whereas MTNL has opposed the government’s move to grant it special treatment concerning spectrum allotment. The company said that since it was a late entrant in the mobile space, it was always at a harmful place as compared to its rivals.

Private GSM players have been at dunces with the government’s over its fresh move to offer added range to BSNL that brought up the PSU’s total allocation to 10 MHz in all key telecommucation circles while the private players had been considering radio frequencies since December 2006.

PSUs have been allotted spectrum according to the earlier allocation criteria, while private players were asked to wait for the new policy, Mr. Goyal said that he could not comment on the matter.

“We are a state-owned company, so it is the government’s prerogative to grant us spectrum,” he said.

In his communiqué to the DoT, on Thursday, Mr. Mittal said that there was no reason why BSNL and MTNL were allotted spectrum generously even without fulfilling the subscriber base criteria as prescribed in the recent plan.