Are mobile operators hoarding spectrum?
Spectrum, the airwaves on which mobile phone services are offered, is the most vital raw material needed to offer cellular telephony. Adequate spectrum at an affordable cost is a vital pre-requisite to ensure high quality services at an affordable price. However, spectrum, being a finite resource, must be used in the most optimal and efficient manner, and in any case, hoarding of spectrum should not be allowed. In fact, if any operator is hoarding spectrum, it should be returned to the government.
It is a well known fact that India has a far lower spectrum allocation (an average of 7.35 MHz per operator) than most other developing or developed regimes — the international average is around 22 MHz
Faced with an aggressively growing subscriber base and the continued paucity of spectrum, Indian GSM operators are making all possible efforts to optimally utilise their existing allotments.
They are doing this not only by increasing the density of their network by setting up more phone towers, but also by deploying all possible spectrum optimisation techniques. Further, these techniques are being used not just in the major metros but also increasingly in smaller cities and towns.
The same has also been recognised by a High Level Committee set up by the Department of Telecommunications in 2003 and as recently as in 2007 by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India in its recommendations. The Indian GSM operators are increasingly becoming a benchmark for the world in terms of over-utilisation of allotted spectrum
These allegations of spectrum hoarding by GSM operators only surfaced when the CDMA (code division multiple access) operators (such as Reliance Communications) wanted a backdoor entry into the GSM industry.
In fact, it is the CDMA operators who have ample unutilised capacity (50 per cent) even as per the existing criteria. Moreover, the 2:1 linkage being applied by DoT, between CDMA and GSM, is actually an unduly lenient criterion, as they themselves have claimed that they are five times more efficient than GSM.
Are only GSM operators required to use spectrum efficiently? In light of the above facts, it is clear that with sufficient unutilised capacities and crossover spectrum, the CDMA operators would be the ones hoarding large amounts of spectrum, a scarce national resource.
