Spectrum panel in logjam as telecom nominees spar

Accusations and counter-accusations by nominees of rival GSM and CDMA operators are holding up discussions on TEC’s criteria, reports Archana Khatri.

The committee that was reviewing Telecom Engineering Centre’s criteria of spectrum allocation seems to be on shaky ground, with accusations and counter-accusations by the nominees of rival GSM and CDMA operators holding up the discussions on TEC’s criteria, which is the key issue.

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The review committee meeting scheduled to be held on Wednesday and Thursday, will now be held only on Thursday.

To placate GSM and CDMA operators, who had refused to accept TEC’s spectrum allocation criteria and had taken the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to court, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had set up a review committee with nominees of CDMA and GSM operators, to study TEC’s spectrum allocation criteria.

The nominee of GSM operators T.V.Ramachandran on Tuesday wrote to R Bandopadhyaya, the chairman of the review committee that TEC’s calculations are flawed and it had incorrectly attributed the data used for calculating the criteria, to COAI.

Countering the letter written by TV Ramachandran, the nominee of CDMA Operators, Dilip Sahay, wrote to the chairman of the review committee that COAI should have raised the matter when the committee began discussions on the matter, and not when the committee is likely to finalise its report.

“We do not support such attempts by the COAI to derail the process of technical consultation when the committee consists of independent technical experts from C-DoT, IIT Chennai and IIT Kanpur," Sahay said.