Vodafone India has issued a statement pertaining to the Department of Telecommunications? (DoT) first set of guidelines for the upcoming spectrum auctions.
The statement says, ?Vodafone welcomes the early auction of 800MHz and 1800MHz spectrum as per the directions of the Supreme Court vide its order dated February 2, 2012.?
?The guidelines issued on July 3, 2012 represent the first step in the initiation of the auction process to be carried out by August 31, 2012 as per directions of the Supreme Court.?
?However, whilst welcoming the move towards fair and transparent auctions as a method of allocating the scarce natural resource of spectrum, Vodafone is concerned that the guidelines provide that:
Liberalisation of Spectrum: The spectrum to be assigned shall be liberalised. In other words, spectrum in any band can be used for providing any service within the scope of respective service licenses using any technology.
Conversion of existing spectrum to liberalised spectrum: Service providers may be allowed to convert their existing 1800 MHz spectrum to liberalised spectrum for a period of 20 years on payment of auction determined price. However, period of 20 years will be subject to licensee acquiring unified licence on expiry of existing licence. The entry fee already paid may be adjusted on pro-rata basis only on one occasion when the licensees convert their spectrum into liberalised spectrum.?
?These provisions of the guidelines are a matter of deep concern for the industry as they wrongly presume that spectrum allocated until now is not ?liberalised?. This is factually incorrect. Liberalisation as postulated by DoT is the freedom to use any technology; this is the same as ?technology neutrality? which has been in place since NTP-99 and the same has been repeatedly stated, recognized, confirmed and clarified by DoT on several occasions.?
T.V. Ramachandran, resident director, regulatory affairs, Vodafone India states ?There is no difference between the ?liberalisation? agenda that the DoT has now announced and what is already permitted under policy and license, including NTP-99. Plainly put, liberalised use/technology neutrality is enshrined in our licenses and there is simply no justification to require us to pay an auction-discovered price for the permission to do what we are already entitled to.?
He pointed out that the industry had already written to the Empowered Group of Ministers through COAI, seeking that this anomaly be corrected immediately and Para 6 be dropped from the guidelines.
