In a letter to Pranab Mukherjee, Minister of Finance, Kapil Sibal, Minister of Telecommunications and IT, has said that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is aware of the need to introduce steps to make the telecom sector more transparent.
The letter said, “The Department recognises the need to initiate measures to reduce information asymmetry in the spectrum market and increase certainty by indicating a roadmap for making spectrum available over a specified time period.?
The National Telecom Policy 2011 (NTP 2011) and the Spectrum Act are expected to address this concern, the letter added.
“Spectrum allocation through a market-based mechanism is a rational and balanced approach for price discovery, subject to availability of adequate information on quantity over a specified time period,” Sibal said.
Prior to this, Mukherjee had written to Sibal on August 20, 2011 requesting DoT to respond to several issues raised by the sector?s stakeholders.
As part of the NTP, the government plans to provide new licences and renew the old ones for 10 years instead of the current practice of 20 years.
Sibal said that while transparency while allocating spectrum is needed, payment of high license fees is also a concern for telecom operators.
On providing broadband connectivity to each village, Sibal said that DoT has chalked out a proposal to set up a National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) to extend the existing optical fibre network. The proposal is expected to be submitted to the Cabinet for its approval.
