No date from DoS on spectrum vacation

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Department of Space (DoS) has not given any final date yet for vacation of spectrum for BWA (Broadband Wireless Access) auction.

“The talks are on. No date has been finalized yet,” Gurudas Kamat, Minister of State for IT and Communication told CIOL when asked about the issue of vacation of spectrum by the Department of Space, on the sidelines of India Telecom 2009 organized jointly by Department of Telecom and FICCI here.

A DoT official informed CIOL that at present the experiments with Department of Space is on to check that there are no interference of BWA with transmission work being done by DoS in the same bandwidth.

“We have to ensure that there is no out-of-band emission in both the technologies and they should co-exist in the same band without interfering each. We are putting various kinds of filters and testing them out. Once DoS is satisfied the test, we will get to know the date for spectrum vacation,” said the official.

DoT has proposed auction of four blocks of 20 Mhz BWA spectrum, two blocks each from 2.3-2.5 Ghz and 2.5-2.69 Ghz frequency band. One block each of 20 Mhz spectrum has been reserved for MTNL and BSNL.

The Department of Space at present uses frequency band from 2.535 to 2.655 for fixed satellite services (FSS) and has concern regarding interference of BWA frequency with its present FSS.

There was another proposal from DoT and recommendation from TRAI that 100 Mhz spectrum can be obtained in frequency band 3.4-3.6 GHz for BWA service. This band is also with DoS.

As per ITU norms, these mobile service and FSS are both primary services in both these bands and both can co-exist.

Hence, the experiments are on to check that there is no interference between both these services but no clear date for the final outcome has been decided yet.