| In the legal notice served today, the Anil Ambani group company has also sought enforcing the minimum subscriber criteria for additional spectrum allocation recommended by the Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC), DoT's technical wing, as opposed to those made by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). |
| The government on Wednesday accepted the Trai norms which are significantly less stringent than TEC's and which the GSM operators said they were "comfortable with" |
| RCom has stated that TEC recommendations were "in-principally accepted" by the DoT in October 2007. Yesterday, it also contended that the TEC's norms were more spectrally efficient and the Trai norms favoured GSM operators over their CDMA rivals. |
| The company said rejecting TEC norms and accepting Trai norms is "arbitrary and illegal and is also contrary to the earlier decision of DoT to accept the TEC report". |
| The company's notice added that the allocation of additional spectrum to incumbent private GSM operators beyond the licence-mandated spectrum of 4.4/6.2 Mhz is "arbitrary, illegal and in violation of the licence agreements". |
| The company has also said incumbent GSM players should surrender 50 MHz spectrum in their possession. |
| It had earlier alleged that the GSM operators were hoarding spectrum beyond their entitlement of 6.2 MHz. |
| The telephony and Internet major has also sought a re-farming of spectrum between 900 MHz and 1800 MHz and its equal distribution among all operators to create a level playing field. |
| Re-farming premium 900 MHz spectrum would result in a capital expenditure savings of Rs 15,000 crore and annual operational expense savings of Rs 2,000 crore, the company said. |
| The legal notice has also suggested that an additional spectrum fee be levied on GSM operators until they return excess spectrum. |
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