This auction will remove spectrum scarcity for all times to come

The Indian Government has put a huge 2,300 MHz of spectrum on sale for which auction will start on October 1, 2016.

- Anjana Das

From the industry and analyst points of view there has been an issue of spectrum pricing that can cause a muted response to the auction. Some quarters feel that the October auction is too soon since the last one and the sale of spectrum of this magnitude could undermine the demand. But Telecom Secretary JS Deepak feels otherwise. In an exclusive interview to Bureaucracy Today, the senior bureaucrat says that due to continuous network expansion and technological upgrading and its offering a bouquet of services on both voice and data in an ever-evolving sector, the telecom players are always starved of spectrum. He also talks about the factors due to which the two telecom PSUs, BSNL and MTNL, are lagging in competition, the reforms introduced by his Department to improve the “ease of doing business”, policy issues that could remove possible grey areas of rules like network testing guidelines and giving extra powers and an action plan on call drops to the TRAI which are under the Government’s consideration. Without getting into specifics on the ongoing tussle between private telecom company Reliance Jio and incumbent operators Bharti Airtel, Idea and Vodafone, Secretary Deepak says their networks should be connected to each other for the sake of mobile customers.

BT: Has the entry of Reliance Jio as a commercial telecom operator now with its deep pockets and future technology pipeline improved the chances of a better offtake of 4G spectrum at the October auction?