DoT deliberating on TRAI proposals

An internal committee headed by AK Tiwary, Member-Technology, DoT was held and the TRAI recommendations discussed over the last two days, April 18 and 19. Once DoT finals its report, the Digital Communications Commission (DCC) approval is required, after which it will be put up to the Union Cabinet for final approval.

The DoT committee has certain reservations and shall be seeking clarification from TRAI. These include:

1. Methodology used to charge 1.5 times the reserve price for 5G spectrum for 30 years. The TRAI recommendations require that the reserve price of spectrum allocation in case of 30 years should be equal to 1.5 times the reserve price of spectrum allocation for 20 years for the respective band.
2. Mandatory rollout obligations. The TRAI recommendations on Easy roll out obligations requires:

• Unlike existing coverage-based rollout obligations, considering deployment of 5G network in MHz and 24.25-28.5 GHz bands, easy network deployment-based roll-out conditions have been recommended for these bands.
• The roll-out obligations and associated conditions for 600 MHz band shall be same as that applicable for 700 MHz band.
  iii. To facilitate the new entrants, in respect of roll out obligations for 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz and 1800 MHz bands, the time period of 1 year for meeting the MRO for Metros LSAs (coverage of 90% of the LSA within one year from the effective date of license or the date of assignment of spectrum won in this auction process, whichever is later), should be enhanced to 2 years (40% coverage by the end of 1st year and 90% coverage by the end of 2nd year).
• The Authority has put forward a mega auction plan valued at over Rs 7.5 lakh crore at the base price across multiple bands for radio waves allocated over 30 years.

The 3500 MHz band is priced at Rs 320 crore per MHz and 700 MHz band at Rs 3900 crore per MHz. This is only slightly below the Rs 49200 crore that they would have paid over a 20-year span for 100 MHz of C-band spectrum at its earlier base price of Rs 492 crore a unit.

While revenues from the capital deployed in the spectrum bands are far lower than in other countries, the prices continue to be far higher, and a 90 per cent cut in the reserve price of 5G spectrum from the 2018 levels is what it will take to get them somewhat at par with their international counterparts.

CT Bureau