Bharti offer not competitive: Tata

Tata Teleservices on Tuesday dubbed as 'anti-competitive' the offer by Bharti Airtel to pay Rs 2,650 crore (Rs 26.5 billifor spectrum, and said the proposal confirmed that the Sunil Mittal-led company was hoarding surplus airwaves.

"Bharti's offer wipes away all that they had been advocating as principle stand," a TTSL spokesperson said.

The GSM player's offer was due to "guilt conscious" and a "pittance against the gains that they make every year", the official said. Bharti Airtel made the offer for all-India spectrum on Monday, and had evoked sharp criticism from rival Anil Ambani group firm Reliance Communications.

Tata Teleservices and RCom are both CDMA players and opposing GSM-based service providers' contention on allocation of airwaves.

Reminding Mittal of the position he had taken earlier, Tatas said that "when Tatas offered to pay for 3G

spectrum Sunil Bharti Mittal said the Prime Minister's Relief Fund was always available to anyone who wanted to donate money.

"The offer of Bharti now confirms that they have been hoarding spectrum beyond contracted amount and because of their guilt conscious, the said amount is now being offered as pittance against the gains that they make every year," the TTSL spokesperson said.

The CDMA camp has been demanding a level playing field with regard to allocation of spectrum in equal quantity and TTSL had earlier rejected the proposal made by department of telecommunication on the ground that it talked about spectrum in ratio of 2:1 in favour of GSM players.