Issues like sharing, refarming and vacating spectrum will be the main agenda when Communications and Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal and telecom service providers meet tomorrow.
As part of the 100-day plan it announced in January, the ministry plans to develop a transparent regime for licensing, allocating spectrum and other important issues by holding discussions with all the stakeholders.
The minister already had a one round of meeting with all the service providers on broadband. It is expected that there will be one or two more rounds of discussions, before the proposed national telecom policy, 2011, is finalised.
The meeting will deliberate upon telecom regulator Trai’s recommendations on spectrum management and the licensing regime — imposition of a price on operators for holding spectrum beyond the contracted limit of 6.2MHz.
Among the other issues to be discussed in the meeting are spectrum refarming and vacation of 800/900 MHz band on the expiry of licence and sharing of spectrum among licensees, which have been allocated initial spectrum, as well as the pricing of sharing of spectrum.
The government has already announced delinking of spectrum from licence as well as a levy of uniform licence fee across all services under various telecom licences.
The Department of Telecommunications also plans to limit the maximum spectrum allocation to an operator. The pricing structure for spectrum in 800, 900 and 1,800 MHz bands will also be discussed.
The allocation process for 2G airwaves beyond the start-up spectrum of 4.4MHz/2.5MHz for GSM/CDMA, respectively, will also figure in the meeting. The talks will also deliberate upon consolidation of spectrum on mergers and acquisitions. Other issues such as market share, minimum number of operators after merger, spectrum pricing on consolidation and spectrum transfer charge, lock-in period and dilution of equity by promoters and period of licence of merged entity will also come up for discussion.
