Govt forms panel to review TEC’s proposals

Within a week of accepting Telecom Engineering Centre’s (TEC) report on spectrum allocation ‘in-principle’, the Government on Tuesday formed a committee to review TEC’s recommendations that were strongly opposed by private operators. The committee would recommend the revision of the present “Spectrum Allocation Criterion” to licensed operators based on the subscriber figures in a scientific and practicable manner, an official statement said. Apart from DoT officials, the committee will have outside experts, as well as representatives from Cellular Operators Association of India and Association of Unified Service Providers of India. While COAI is a lobby group of GSM operators, AUSPI represents CDMA service providers.

The committee will give its report within three weeks for finalisation of spectrum allocation criterion for operators. Government had accepted in-principle TEC’s report on spectrum efficiency on October 31. TEC had suggested up to 8-times increase in subscriber base for additional spectrum.