In a letter to Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union Minister of Communications, Electronics and Information Technology and Railways, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said that the government’s failure to identify 6 GHz frequency range for mobile services would harm India’s interests and impact the ecosystem development worldwide.
Lt. Gen. Dr S. P. Kochhar, director general, COAI, noted in the letter that the failure to designate this band as originally intended will not only harm India’s International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) interests, but also impact the progress towards the development of a worldwide ecosystem for IMT in this band.
Telecom carriers Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea Limited (Vi) have been demanding the government to identify and allocate radio waves in the 6 GHz band for commercial mobile services or IMT. Furthermore, the matter snowballed into a controversy following telco lobby groups seeking spectrum in the 6425 MHz-7025 MHz band, but opposed by tech companies such as Google and Meta. However, identification of 6 GHz band would address the spectrum deficiency.
Incumbent telecom carriers want the 6 GHz band to be auctioned and fully made available for 5G services and for 6G in future. On the contrary, tech companies represented by Broadband India Forum (BIF) want it to be delicensed to boost affordable broadband penetration across rural India through public Wi-Fi.
