State-run companies also join telecom war

Government-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam joined the ongoing battle...

Government-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam BSNL and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam MTNL joined the ongoing battle between the existing GSM players and the CDMA service providers. Dashing charges, MTNL on Friday said that the spectrum allotted to it was well within the rules and regulations. The company blamed private operators for its delayed entry into GSM services, as the private operators approached court when the state-run telecom company was launching its services.

Yesterday, Bharti Airtel chairman and managing director Sunil Bharti Mittal shot off a letter to the department of telecommunications DoT expressing anguish over spectrum allocation procedure which is against the existing GSM operators. Mittal also said that the two PSUs are being favoured in allotting spectrum.

BSNL has also said the spectrum that was allocated to the company in its various licence service areas was justified as per the existing norms. According to the company there is no logic in government asking them to surrender spectrum as it was properly utilised. The PSU argued that in most of the circles it was operating, its competitors had comparable spectrum allocated to them.

8220;BSNL has already made use of the spectrum and subscribers are being serviced. It is also paying the applicable spectrum charges towards this allocation. In more than 50 per cent of its circles, additional spectrum is justified based on the existing norms and requests that are pending with the government,8221; said BSNL CMD Kuldeep Goyal.

Blaming private operators for delay in launch of its services, MTNL said that besides the three-year exclusivity period that private GSM operators enjoyed initially, its entry in the cellular space was delayed by nearly two years because of the various court cases filed by private mobile operators to restrict the state-run service provider8217;s entry.

8220;Throughout the world, incumbent operators were given the license first, whereas, in our case it was delayed. As a result, by the time MTNL launched its cellular services, competitors were already around six years ahead. This resulted in loss of vast business opportunity to MTNL, in terms of subscriber base and revenue,8221; it said.

On special treatment on allocation of spectrum and allegations of favoritism from the government, MTNL said all that could be put to rest by the fact that to take care of the congestion and network quality problems, its repeated request in DoT for allotting additional six carriers in 900 MHz had resulted in no favourable decision.

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On Wednesday, the Telecom Engineering Centre proposed to raise the subscriber count for the additional spectrum allotment to the GSM players. Stung by TEC charges that private operators were not using their allotted spectrum efficiently, Mittal challenged state-run MTNL to set up two model networks in Delhi and Mumbai to demonstrate how an efficient network is run.

8220;Before the department moves ahead with the revised norms, I would like to urge you to direct DoT to demonstrate and guide the industry for efficient spectrum use,8221; Mittal had said.