Trai open house on Spectrum pricing

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) will conduct an Open House in Delhi on January 4 on the potential valuation and reserve price of airwaves across the 700 Mhz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2300 Mhz and 2500 Mhz bands respectively in the run-up to the next spectrum sale, likely in early-2016.

The Trai Open House comes at a time when India's top carriers have disagreed on key issues like spectrum caps, reserve price and even auctioning premium 4G airwaves in the 700 MHz band.

For instance, newcomer Reliance Jio Infocomm has differed with GSM biggies such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular on spectrum caps and the reserve price of airwaves to be auctioned, although all four are all in agreement that the government must not auction premium 4G spectrums in the 700 Mhz band anytime soon.

It's a different matter that the likes of Tata Teleservices and Norway's Telenor, in their submissions to the Trai, have advocated an immediate auction of these high-speed broadband airwaves.

In its consultation paper unveiled last month, the sector regulator had proposed radical changes in airwave holding norms, suggesting that the government keep only an overall cap, abolish band-wise limits and have a combined ceiling on what a carrier can hold in the efficient 700 MHz, 800 MHz and 900 MHz bands put together.

The Trai had also proposed clubbing airwaves in the 2300 MHz and the 2500 MHz bands because if the current 50% cap in each band is retained, then existing operators in these two bands won't be able to acquire an additional block in this spectrum as they would cross the limit in the collective band.

At present, the government has capped the amount of spectrum an operator can hold at 50% in each band allocated and 25% of the total airwaves across bands in a service area.

In its consultation paper, Trai had sought comments by December 21 and counter-comments by December 28.