The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has stated that it will issue the final spectrum sharing and trading guidelines only after the completion of the forthcoming spectrum auctions in February 2015. This is likely to cause a delay in the introduction of the spectrum guidelines until then. DoT is reportedly of the view that releasing the guidelines before the auctions might lead to damped bidding by the telecom operators and hence, would cost a revenues loss to the government on the sale of spectrum.
Earlier, an internal committee of DoT had fixed a deadline of December 19, 2014 to issue the final norms. Also, the Ministry of Communications and IT had announced the release of spectrum trading and sharing guidelines by the December 2014. However, the final decision on the timeline for the release of spectrum sharing and trading guidelines will be taken by the Telecom Commission.
According to the draft on the guidelines, DoT was considering allowing the telecom companies to share 2G spectrum given they meet some conditions. Such spectrum sharing arrangements would also allow telecom operators to share spectrum in the same circle, but not between operators holding spectrum in two separate circles. In January 2014, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had also recommended allowing outright transfer of spectrum by companies to other operators across all bands of frequency airwaves (for spectrum won through auctions in 2010 or later).
