Trai to draw fresh plan on spectrum

The communications ministry has asked the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to submit a fresh list of recommendations on the requirement and pricing of spectrum for third generation mobile services, even as it said the issue of foreigners being allowed to occupy key positions in telecom service providers' operations would be decided by July.

Addressing a press conference, Communications and IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran said the department of posts planned to invest a part of the money (around Rs 225 crore) collected by its life insurance scheme in the stock market, in order to earn better returns for investors.

The current corpus of its life insurance was around Rs 10,000 crore. Insurance regulator IRDA allows a maximum of 15 per cent of its life insurance corpus to be invested in the stock market.

Maran said more spectrum would be available to telecom companies by the end of the year as defence services would vacate 45 MHz that they are using at present. Of this, 25 MHz is in the IMT 2000 band and 20 MHz in the 1800 band.

The government also plans to encourage electronics manufacturing in India through special economic zones (SEZs). "Our efforts will be to make India a hub of telecom manufacturing by facilitating more and more telecom specific SEZs," Maran said.

He forecast that an investment of about $11 billion could materialise in the manufacturing sector in the next three years. It was not just overseas investment in manufacturing that would be encouraged, domestic efforts too were expected to get government support.

The government hoped to pave the way for introduction of mobile handsets priced at about Rs 1,000 by next year through encouraging domestic players, Maran added.

On the proposed synergising of operations of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd, the minister said the final report of the consultant was expected by the end of this month.