The Great Indian Spectrum Dispute
The Great Indian Spectrum Dispute
By Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/The-Great-Indian-Spectrum-Dispute/210194/1
Published in Infrastructure Page of The Financial Express (http://www.financialexpress.com) in the issue of Tuesday, 14 August 2007.
Copyright, 2007, Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
International Publishing Rights in all media in all jurisdictions with Financial Express
Reproduction and Forwarding in any manner is strictly prohibited, and will be prosecuted in criminal and civil courts without any warning whatsoever.
Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
19 Maitri Apts, CIS Off Soc # 19
A – 3, Paschim Vihar
New Delhi 110 063
Tel: 09990 265 822, 092 12 08 86 00
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The Great Indian Spectrum Dispute
By Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/The-Great-Indian-Spectrum-Dispute/210194/1
The refusal of the armed forces to honour their commitment to vacate 45 megahertz of electromagnetic spectrum in favour of cellular operators will adversely affect the spread of telecom among rural masses and the poorer sections of society. Cellular operators had been banking on this release of spectrum to expand their networks and add on more subscribers. Operators such as Idea and Aircel have not been able to commence their services in many areas several months after having been issued licenses due to lack of spectrum. Telecom Minister A Raja will meet Defence Minister AK Anthony next week to again petition him to keep his commitment to release the spectrum.
Electromagnetic spectrum in India has been a very scarce resource, mainly due its occupation by the defence forces and intelligence agencies, who have been allocated vast swathes of spectrum. The Indian government has been grappling with the allocation among different government and public agencies since the 1920s. Soon after Independence, an ICS officer, LC Jain, got so fed up of the bickering between different government and public agencies (remember that there were no private sector users then) that he arbitrarily decreed that in each spectral band, one-third would be reserved for the armed forces and security agencies; one-third for various civilian ministries and international obligations such as aviation, meteorology, maritime applications, television and radio broadcasting, disaster communications, etc.; and the remaining one-third would be allocated on a case-by-case basis.
The situation was further complicated because India’s armed forces imported equipment from both the NATO countries as well as the Soviet Bloc. NATO had identified spectral bands (called the NATO bands) for its defence requirements. In NATO countries, civilian telecom operators were not permitted to operate in the NATO bands, and they operated in certain remaining parts of the spectrum, termed the Non-NATO bands. Indian telecom operators, such as the Department of Telecommunications, and later, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd, imported equipment from western manufacturers such as Lucent, Alcatel, Ericsson, Siemens, Motorola, and Nokia, which were in these non-NATO civilian bands. But a lot of the equipment which the Indian armed forces had imported from the Soviet Bloc, as well as indigenously manufactured equipment, fell into frequency bands which overlapped considerably with the civilian non-NATO bands, leading to extreme electromagnetic interference in several cases.
The situation was further complicated by the entry of the private sector into cellular mobile services in 1992. The International Telecommunications Union had allotted the 880 to 915 MHz paired with 925 to 960 MHz bands to GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) operators worldwide. The ITU also allotted the 824 to 849 MHz paired with 869 to 894 MHz to CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access, a rival technology to GSM) operators. Later the ITU also allotted the 1710 to 1785 MHz paired with 1805 to 1880 MHz bands to GSM operators in countries where the GSM 900 band had been wholly occupied.
But in India, vast portions of these bands had been allotted – free of charge - to the defence forces and to the railways several decades earlier. The armed forces demanded several thousand crores as compensation to vacate their spectrum in
favour of the GSM operators. Since the entire signalling system of the railways was plumb in the middle of these bands, the GSM operators had to work around these constraints. As a result, Indian GSM operators have far less spectrum (till now the maximum allotted to any Indian operator has been 10 megahertz, and many have only 4.4 megahertz) than their European counterparts, who are typically allotted 25 to 35 megahertz.
Western countries have successfully solved the problems of getting their defence forces to vacate spectrum in favour of civilian cellular operators. In USA, more than 200 megahertz has been transferred from the Pentagon to commercial operators through the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. In UK, the GSM 900 and GSM 1800 bands were voluntarily surrendered by the UK Defence Ministry and refarmed to GSM operators. This refarming was also done in Germany where the defence forces were shifted to higher frequency bands. In France, the prime minister personally supervised an agreement in 1991 between the defence ministry and the French spectrum management authority by which 50 MHz in the GSM 900 band and 150 MHz in the GSM 1800 band were refarmed in a phased manner to French GSM operators over a ten year period.
In India, the situation is much more complicated due to Soviet Bloc equipment which are being used in several situations of great national importance. In 1998, the Indian Air Force demanded compensation of Rs 140 crores to vacate spectrum in Gujarat and Maharashtra in favour of cellular operators, and Rs 205 crores for the North Eastern sector.
In the present instance, the armed forces had demanded that BSNL build them an alternate, totally secure communications network, for them to release 45 megahertz to the cellular operators. They had estimated the cost of this network to be Rs 400 to 600 crores. But BSNL, which is supposed to deliver this network within the next couple of months, estimates the capital costs of this network to be Rs 6,000-8,000 crores, with an additional annual operating expense of over Rs 1,000 crores.
Telecom Minister Mr A Raja has countered that if the armed forces do not release the spectrum immediately, he will bill them Rs 5,000 crores as spectrum fees, whereas it has been given to them totally free of charge for the last century. It is learnt that a Group of Ministers led by Pranab Mukherjee will look into the disputes between the Defence and Telecom ministries.
India could perhaps take a cue from China which also has a legacy of Soviet Bloc military equipment. China has managed to provide its state owned cellular operators with 90 MHz in the 900 band and 160 MHz in the 1800 band.
Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad, an alumnus of Carnegie Mellon and IIT Kanpur, heads his own telecom consulting firm in New Delhi
Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
Tel: 09990 265 822, 092 12 08 86 00
Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
19 Maitri Apts, CIS Off Soc # 19
A – 3, Paschim Vihar
New Delhi 110 063
Published in Infrastructure Page of The Financial Express (http://www.financialexpress.com) in the issue of Tuesday, 14 August 2007.
Copyright, 2007, Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
International Publishing Rights in all media in all jurisdictions with Financial Express
Reproduction and Forwarding in any manner is strictly prohibited, and will be prosecuted in criminal and civil courts without any warning whatsoever.
The Great Indian Spectrum Dispute
By Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/The-Great-Indian-Spectrum-Dispute/210194/1
posted by Ravi Visvesvaraya Sharada Prasad | 8/31/2007 08:12:00 pm
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