COAI wants level playing field with BSNL

NEW DELHI: The COAI, in a submission to the Department of Telecom has demanded to immediately restore level playing field and allot spectrum to all eligible and entitled private GSM applicants.

T.V. Ramachandran, director general, COAI said that such preferential and out of turn allotment of spectrum was a clear violation of the contractual and legal rights of the private GSM operators.

The Association was reacting to media reports on the allotment of up to 10MHz spectrum to BSNL in almost all circles.

The COAI also said that the ongoing review of the subscriber allocation criteria by the TEC appeared to be focused only on the GSM industry and that no separate exercise was being done for the CDMA operators.

The submission pointed out that it was necessary that separate TEC analysis also be done for spectrum use by the CDMA operators applying the same assumptions, criteria, inter-site distances, use of various spectrum optimization techniques, etc., as are being applied to the GSM industry.

Ramachandran also stated that the TRAI recommendations on subscriber allocation criteria were completely erroneous.