Government to prioritize MVNOs

NEW DELHI, INDIA: With the spectrum war on, the government is looking at an option of de-linking spectrum from the licensing terms.

This clearly shows that the government is looking ahead to support Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) in the telecom sector, to end up the spectrum war.

According to sources in the Ministry of Communications, the government is carrying out study on the countries, which have launched MVNO business. Globally there are more than 350 MVNOs. MVNO is a company that provides mobile phone service but does not have its own frequency allocation of the radio spectrum, nor does it have the infrastructure required to provide mobile telephone service. They are also known as ‘switchless resellers’.

In another initiative to price the scarce spectrum, the telecom regulator will recommend government to auction Mobile TV spectrum.

Nripendra Misra, chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said that they are preparing a draft document recommending the government to auction the Mobile TV spectrum.

“We have prepared the draft recommendations for auction of spectrum and will be submitted to the Department of Telecom (DoT) by Wednesday,” Misra said.

According to experts the frequency bands used by global mobile operators are VHF (170 to 240MHz), UHF (470 to 860MHz), L Band (variable depending on region, but generally falls somewhere between UHF and S Band) and Satellite S Band (2170 to 2200MHz).

Industry sources informed that mobile TV solution providers have recommended the government to allocate Satellite S Band for Mobile TV in India. It may be mentioned here that some of the countries have considered assigning two or three UHF frequencies for DVB-H mobile TV services.