India Govt amends 3g policy

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The Department of Telecom (DoT) on Thursday amended the recently announced 3G policy thus allowing any person who holds a Unified Access Service Licence (UASL) or Cellular Mobile Telecom Service Licence or who has previous experience of running 3G telecom services to bid for spectrum.

The amendment also says that CDMA operators will be allotted 3G spectrum through auction. The earlier clause that besides the existing licence holders only those telcos with experience in providing 3G services can bid for the spectrum has bee retained.

DoT has already started the process of appointing an agency to conduct auction of spectrum. The agency is expected to be in place by 30 September.

The DoT amended the norms regarding the annual spectrum charges as well. Now the companies would have to pay it at the rate of one per cent on the "incremental revenue due to 3G services" after a period of one year. The method for calculating this would be notified separately.

Similarly in the Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) services, including WiMax services, also the DoT has made amendments and introduced new frequency band of 2.3 GHz band in addition to the previously notified 2.5 GHz band for spectrum allocation.

The new amendment would double the base price for WiMax spectrum to Rs 1,010 crore and allow successful bidders to offer both data and voice services.

According to The Economic Times the larger implication of the 3G policy amendment is that foreign telcos who bag 3G licences can now buy out existing operators who hold 2G radio frequencies, thus enabling them to offer both 3G and 2G services.

Besides, if a foreign player were to bag 3G spectrum and also buy an existing Indian operator, the telco will not have to pay an additional Rs 1,651 crore for the UASL licence.