Vodafone Essar has told the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) that auctioning 2G spectrum is the appropriate way to solve the ongoing issue, according to news reports. The operator has said that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India?s (TRAI) recommendation to price spectrum based on calculations was incorrect and unjustifiable.
In a written correspondence to R. Chandrashekhar, chairman, telecom commission and secretary (telecom), the operator has said that the Shivraj Patil Committee has criticised the DoT for not implementing the Cabinet?s 2003 decision to move to auctioning of spectrum. It added that even today, TRAI refuses to advice to move to an auction model and has come out with an arbitrary and flawed administrative way of charging for spectrum, designed to aggravate the discrimination between different operators.
The letter went on to say that the company believes that there is only one way out of this mess viz. allocation of spectrum through transparent auctions. In respect of an administrative approach to address legacy issues, the company believes that it at all it has to be applied, the only acceptable way forward will have to be a solution that is anchored around on uniformly applied principles ? i.e. no distinctions between below and beyond 6.2 Mhz or between GSM and CDMA.
Prior to this, TRAI had recommended fixing the price for 6.2 Mhz of pan-India start-up 2G spectrum at Rs 109.72 billion, more than six times the present cost of Rs 16.58 billion. In its recommendations to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), TRAI has also said that every Mhz of additional spectrum (on an all-India basis) beyond the contracted limit of 6.2 Mhz would cost Rs 45.71 billion.
Vodafone also said that TRAI has no powers to impose retrospective charges for spectrum already allocated.
