CDG vexed by 3G spectrum policy delay

R Jai Krishna

NEW DELHI: The CDMA Development Group (CDG), an international trade association formed to foster the worldwide development, implementation and use of CDMA technologies, has asked the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to announce the long-pending 3G spectrum policy.

Expressing apprehensions over the delay BV Raman, country head for the CDMA development group told CyberMedia News that with clear guidelines and allotment of spectrum the teledensity in the country will improve apart from the service providers being able to offer better services to the end users.

“The TRAI recommendations finalized last year were the second set of recommendations in as many years, and the group hopes that the policy announcement will be made by March 2007, as publicly stated by the government,” he said.

A delay in the announcement would create more uncertainty in the timing of the launch of 3G services, depriving Indian consumers and businesses of the benefits of these services and keep India behind other countries, including many of its neighbors who have already launched the services.

Raman said that the CDG believes that the announcement of the 3G Spectrum Policy should not in any way be linked to the delay in the release of the spectrum in the 1800 MHz band, which was part of the 45 MHz of spectrum that was to have been freed.

To maximize Spectrum Availability, and with a view to maintain a level playing field between various technologies, the CDG in its recommendation sent to the DoT has recommended creation of a level playing field amongst operators and restore parity from the economies of scale that the 2100 MHz band will offer GSM operators.

“The CDMA operators in India should be allowed to offer CDMA2000® 1xEV-DO services in their existing 800 MHz band. This is the common practice throughout the rest of the world. Additional carriers in cities like Mumbai and Delhi should immediately be made available for this purpose. The 1X network deployed by the service providers in India are already 3G capable and are being currently under utilized,” he said further.

The CDG wanted the DoT to ensure adequate spectrum availability to accommodate the many contenders and also ensure that the CDMA operators are able to offer services in a spectrum band where equipment availability and economies of scale are available. For this, the CDG had suggested to seriously consider TRAIs recommendations regarding the feasibility to deploy and release 1900 MHz to the CDMA operators concurrent with the release of 2100 MHz Spectrum.

“We encourage DoT to make the entire spectrum allocation and management technology neutral so that all future allocations of spectrum are made in equal measure to both of the deployed technologies,” Raman added.

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