NEW DELHI, INDIA: The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will consult Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for extension of validity time for 3G and Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) license in the next 15 days.

“We will consult TRAI in next 15 days to extend license validity time for 3G and BWA. For BWA we will try to make it 20 years,” said Siddharth Behura, secretary, Department of Telecom, at an event organized by Internet Service Providers Association of India.

According to the earlier announcement made by the DoT, the validity license for 3G spectrum was 20 years and whereas for BWA license it was 15 years.

This move of DoT is intended to make spectrum fee economical for players in the industry in the wake of recent hike in the reserve price for both 3G and BWA spectrum.

The new pricing for 3G had been increased to Rs. 3,500 crore from earlier proposed reserve price of Rs. 2,020 crore and for BWA it is Rs. 1,750 crore.

However, Behura hinted that there can be delay in BWA spectrum issue due to some issues between the Department of Space (DoS) and the DoT. And this can delay the WiMax rollout. WiMax or wireless Internet is essential for increasing broadband penetration in the country - especially in rural areas.  The DoS thinks the WiMax operations would interfere with sensitive satellite communications in adjacent spectrum bands.

“There are some issues in 2.5 Ghz bands and even England has deferred their auction plan by a year. We have 2.3 Ghz band that we may keep for conditional auction. Things are under consideration and we will soon clarify,” said Behura.

There were four blocks of unpaired 20 Mhz in the 2.3 and 2.5 GHz bands to be allotted in each 22 service areas. One block in 2.5 GHZ band was kept reserved for BSNL and MTNL.