The Telecom Commission (TC) has decided to allow telecom operators to share spectrum. However the facility will be limited to the 2G spectrum only.
TC has suggested few conditions to govern spectrum sharing. According to these conditions, spectrum sharing will be allowed only between two spectrum holders. A non-licensee or licensee who has not been assigned spectrum as yet cannot be party to spectrum trading. For instance, operators which do not have 2G spectrum in a given circle cannot share spectrum with any other operator that has airwaves in that circle.
Further, it has been specified that two operators can share airwaves only if their combined holdings do not exceed the limits prescribed under the recently approved merger and acquisition (M&A) norms. As per the M&A conditions, the merged entity will be allowed to have up to 25 per cent of the total airwaves in a given circle.
Spectrum sharing deals will have to be renewed every five years. The operators sharing spectrum will have to pay usage charges on the airwaves held jointly by them. Currently, operators share between 2 per cent and 6 per cent of their annual revenues based on the quantity of spectrum held by them. This means that if the spectrum is shared by two operators having 4.4 MHz each of 2G spectrum in a circle, they will have to share 6 per cent each of their annual sales towards this levy.
TC has also suggested that operators sharing spectrum must pay the government the commercial value of the additional airwaves they are using.
The spectrum sharing, however, will not be applicable to 3G spectrum.
