TRAI moots focus on rural India

NEW DELHI: Besides increased spectrum, the capacity of the system also affects the quality of service (QoS), DPS Seth, TRAI member, said here today.

“Increased spectrum allocation is not the only factor for providing better quality. Spectrum is important for customers as well as for the regulator and the operator. But the capacity of the system that is being installed also affects the quality of service (QoS),” he said responding to the operators' demand for greater spectrum to provide better quality and more services.

Speaking at the Second International Conference “Wireless & Mobile India 2005”, Seth said, “As spectrum is a 'natural' resource, it is scarce. Apart from spectrum a large number of parameters are available with the operators to achieve greater quality and services. In rural areas, passive infrastructure, and not spectrum is the main issue”.

Jagbir Singh, Group CTO of Airtel Enterprise Services, said, “To provide quality service, adequate spectrum should be allocated. QoS and number of subscribers is usually being talked about, but what kind of spectrum is available should also be looked at to provide good quality service.”

He urged the government to allocate spectrum based on usage rather than subscriber base.

Admitting that there is a shortage of spectrum, Ministry of Communications and IT wireless advisor PK Garg said that operators should concentrate on the rural areas. The spread of mobile services is very small in rural areas compared with urban areas.

“With wireless services becoming more affordable and greater availability of spectrum in rural areas, private operators should go to the rural areas,” he said.

Admitting the relative higher pricing of spectrum in India, Garg said that efficient pricing is needed to achieve efficient use of the spectrum.

“The government is trying to release additional spectrum from current users, but till the users agree to freeing the spectrum, operators should try to use it with cooperation from everybody,” he added.

BSNL director (finance) Dr. SD Saxena said that there is a tremendous problem of congestion in the network and spectrum is urgently needed. BSNL is proactively trying to push the 3G technology into the villages, but the spectrum to connect is not there.