The Great Indian Spectrum Dispute
By Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad

http://www.financialexpress.com/news...spute/210194/1

Published in Infrastructure Page of The Financial Express (http://
www.financialexpress.com) in the issue of Tuesday, 14 August 2007.

Copyright, 2007, Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad

International Publishing Rights in all media in all jurisdictions with
Financial Express

Reproduction and Forwarding in any manner is strictly prohibited, and
will be prosecuted in criminal and civil courts without any warning
whatsoever.

Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
19 Maitri Apts, CIS Off Soc # 19
A - 3, Paschim Vihar
New Delhi 110 063

Tel: 09990 265 822, 092 12 08 86 00
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
==========================================================

The Great Indian Spectrum Dispute
By Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad

http://www.financialexpress.com/news...spute/210194/1

The refusal of the armed forces to honour their commitment to vacate
45 megahertz of electromagnetic spectrum in favour of cellular
operators will adversely affect the spread of telecom among rural
masses and the poorer sections of society. Cellular operators had been
banking on this release of spectrum to expand their networks and add
on more subscribers. Operators such as Idea and Aircel have not been
able to commence their services in many areas several months after
having been issued licenses due to lack of spectrum. Telecom Minister
A Raja will meet Defence Minister AK Anthony next week to again
petition him to keep his commitment to release the spectrum.

Electromagnetic spectrum in India has been a very scarce resource,
mainly due its occupation by the defence forces and intelligence
agencies, who have been allocated vast swathes of spectrum. The Indian
government has been grappling with the allocation among different
government and public agencies since the 1920s. Soon after
Independence, an ICS officer, LC Jain, got so fed up of the bickering
between different government and public agencies (remember that there
were no private sector users then) that he arbitrarily decreed that in
each spectral band, one-third would be reserved for the armed forces
and security agencies; one-third for various civilian ministries and
international obligations such as aviation, meteorology, maritime
applications, television and radio broadcasting, disaster
communications, etc.; and the remaining one-third would be allocated
on a case-by-case basis.

The situation was further complicated because India's armed forces
imported equipment from both the NATO countries as well as the Soviet
Bloc. NATO had identified spectral bands (called the NATO bands) for
its defence requirements. In NATO countries, civilian telecom
operators were not permitted to operate in the NATO bands, and they
operated in certain remaining parts of the spectrum, termed the Non-
NATO bands. Indian telecom operators, such as the Department of
Telecommunications, and later, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar
Telephone Nigam Ltd, imported equipment from western manufacturers
such as Lucent, Alcatel, Ericsson, Siemens, Motorola, and Nokia, which
were in these non-NATO civilian bands. But a lot of the equipment
which the Indian armed forces had imported from the Soviet Bloc, as
well as indigenously manufactured equipment, fell into frequency bands
which overlapped considerably with the civilian non-NATO bands,
leading to extreme electromagnetic interference in several cases.

The situation was further complicated by the entry of the private
sector into cellular mobile services in 1992. The International
Telecommunications Union had allotted the 880 to 915 MHz paired with
925 to 960 MHz bands to GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications)
operators worldwide. The ITU also allotted the 824 to 849 MHz paired
with 869 to 894 MHz to CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access, a rival
technology to GSM) operators. Later the ITU also allotted the 1710 to
1785 MHz paired with 1805 to 1880 MHz bands to GSM operators in
countries where the GSM 900 band had been wholly occupied.

But in India, vast portions of these bands had been allotted - free of
charge - to the defence forces and to the railways several decades
earlier. The armed forces demanded several thousand crores as
compensation to vacate their spectrum in
favour of the GSM operators. Since the entire signalling system of the
railways was plumb in the middle of these bands, the GSM operators had
to work around these constraints. As a result, Indian GSM operators
have far less spectrum (till now the maximum allotted to any Indian
operator has been 10 megahertz, and many have only 4.4 megahertz) than
their European counterparts, who are typically allotted 25 to 35
megahertz.

Western countries have successfully solved the problems of getting
their defence forces to vacate spectrum in favour of civilian cellular
operators. In USA, more than 200 megahertz has been transferred from
the Pentagon to commercial operators through the Omnibus Budget
Reconciliation Act of 1993. In UK, the GSM 900 and GSM 1800 bands were
voluntarily surrendered by the UK Defence Ministry and refarmed to GSM
operators. This refarming was also done in Germany where the defence
forces were shifted to higher frequency bands. In France, the prime
minister personally supervised an agreement in 1991 between the
defence ministry and the French spectrum management authority by which
50 MHz in the GSM 900 band and 150 MHz in the GSM 1800 band were
refarmed in a phased manner to French GSM operators over a ten year
period.

In India, the situation is much more complicated due to Soviet Bloc
equipment which are being used in several situations of great national
importance. In 1998, the Indian Air Force demanded compensation of Rs
140 crores to vacate spectrum in Gujarat and Maharashtra in favour of
cellular operators, and Rs 205 crores for the North Eastern sector.

In the present instance, the armed forces had demanded that BSNL build
them an alternate, totally secure communications network, for them to
release 45 megahertz to the cellular operators. They had estimated the
cost of this network to be Rs 400 to 600 crores. But BSNL, which is
supposed to deliver this network within the next couple of months,
estimates the capital costs of this network to be Rs 6,000-8,000
crores, with an additional annual operating expense of over Rs 1,000
crores.

Telecom Minister Mr A Raja has countered that if the armed forces do
not release the spectrum immediately, he will bill them Rs 5,000
crores as spectrum fees, whereas it has been given to them totally
free of charge for the last century. It is learnt that a Group of
Ministers led by Pranab Mukherjee will look into the disputes between
the Defence and Telecom ministries.

India could perhaps take a cue from China which also has a legacy of
Soviet Bloc military equipment. China has managed to provide its state
owned cellular operators with 90 MHz in the 900 band and 160 MHz in
the 1800 band.

Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad, an alumnus of Carnegie Mellon and IIT
Kanpur, heads his own telecom consulting firm in New Delhi

Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
Tel: 09990 265 822, 092 12 08 86 00
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
19 Maitri Apts, CIS Off Soc # 19
A - 3, Paschim Vihar
New Delhi 110 063

Published in Infrastructure Page of The Financial Express (http://
www.financialexpress.com) in the issue of Tuesday, 14 August 2007.

Copyright, 2007, Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad

International Publishing Rights in all media in all jurisdictions with
Financial Express

Reproduction and Forwarding in any manner is strictly prohibited, and
will be prosecuted in criminal and civil courts without any warning
whatsoever.

The Great Indian Spectrum Dispute
By Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad

http://www.financialexpress.com/news...spute/210194/1



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