India May Grant 3G Spectrum to State Owned Firms
India's two state owned telcos may get 3G spectrum allocation before the private companies if new proposals are accepted by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). While this would give the state owned firms a head-start in rolling out their networks, they will be required to match the price paid by the private companies in the later spectrum auction.
“We have been assured by the government that BSNL will be given priority in allocation of spectrum,” a senior official of BSNL told the Business Standard newspaper. Under the proposals, MTNL and BSNL will be provided 5 MHz spectrum each in the 2.1 GHz band.
3G spectrum is expected to start coming available towards the end of this year when the defense bodies start to migrate their services to other frequency bands.
BSNL operates a nationwide GSM network, while MTNL currently covers just Delhi and Mumbai. Figures from the Mobile World note that BSNL ended last year with just under 33 million subscribers, and a market share of 14.3%. By comparison, MTNL had around 3.1 million subscribers at the year end.
On the web: Business Standard - Mobile World
Posted to the site on 14th April 2008