Licence-spectrum guidelines in 10 days: Raja
Press Trust Of
India
Posted online: Friday, October 05,
2007 at 0000 hrs 
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NEW DELHI:: The Government said on Thursday that it would issue
the new set of guidelines for issue of telecom licences
and allocation of spectrum in the next 10 days.
“A committee has been formed to scrutinise
details of new applications and spectrum related issues. It will submit its
report in the next 10 days,” communications minister A Raja told reporters here
on the sidelines of an industry chamber meet.
The Department of Telecom (DoT) is currently
looking into guidelines relating to spectrum allocation and other financial
criteria like net worth of the applicant for the purpose of awarding new licences.
The Government has received over 300 applications from nearly 30
companies for entry into the fast growing telecom sector.
Source:PTI
BSNL gets
additional GSM spectrum
Our Bureau
New Delhi, Oct. 4 Even
as private cellular operators are clamouring for more
radio frequency, the Government has allocated
additional GSM spectrum to State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd in 16 States
across the country.
The allocation will take the total bandwidth available with BSNL to 10 Mhz.
Among the private operators, only a few such as Airtel
and Vodafone have a 10-Mhz spectrum, and that too only
in high-density areas such as Delhi and Mumbai.
The spectrum was given to BSNL on a trial basis by the Department of
Telecom in May. However, in an order sent out late last month, BSNL has asked
all its regional units to deploy the radio frequency for commercial use
immediately.
The move is likely to peeve existing private GSM players who have been
demanding additional spectrum for more than a year.
Source:
Business line dated 05-10-2007
Spectrum demand may usher in
new tech
Thomas K Thomas
New Delhi, Oct 4
With the demand for GSM spectrum hitting a new high, some of the new
applicants for telecom licence are finding innovative
ways to break into the Indian mobile segment. One such company called Vavasi Telegence is planning to
bring a better version of the recently developed Chinese technology — Time
Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) which will offer
high speed wireless connectivity in a spectrum band that is not in use at the
moment.
Pan- India access licenCe
Vavasi has applied for a pan-Indian unified
telecom access licence and holds proprietary rights
over the new technology. The company is conducting trials of this
next-generation technology called NG1 in Madhya Pradesh and has already
partnered with Bangalore-based Measurements And Controls India Ltd for the
manufacturing equipment.
Speaking to Business Line Mr Farid Arifuddin,
Managing Director, Vavasi Telegence
Pvt Ltd, said that the company plans to build a
network that will support 100 million subscribers over the next five years.
Vavasi has also partnered with Mr Sam Pitroda, as an advisor to
the project and roped in the founder director of Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), Dr M. V. Pitke,
as Technology Advisor. The company has set up a research and development centre
to work on various applications and services that can be deployed using the new
technology. “We want to make India the hub for
this technology, which we are calling as NG1. Our plan is to go beyond India and make
inroads into other countries around the world. For this we are in the process
of putting in place partnerships, alliances and a manufacturing base,” Mr Arifuddin said. The company
has already got a licence to offer services in Mongolia and plans to
bid for the 700 Mhz band
being auctioned in the US.
Vavasi also plans to strike partnerships
for manufacturing handsets suited to NG1, which will be priced between $30-
$1500 depending on the features. Since the company is seeking the guard band in
the 1800 Mhz for offering
next-generation wireless services in India, it may be
able to acquire the licence ahead of other 30 new
applicants. Vavasi may get a headstart
into high bandwidth telecom services ahead of GSM operators such as Airtel and Vodafone since NG1 is touted to be more
efficient than existing third generation (3G)
technologies.