After staging a walkout from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's open house on spectrum allocation, the Cellular Operators Association of India came around to make a presentation before the regulator in the afternoon seeking the 1900 Mhz band for rolling out 3G services.
The regulator has asked the Coai to submit a detailed note on the issue by the end of the week. CDMA operators will also make a presentation before the regulator opposing the demands made by the GSM operators.
" We will put our views before the regulator in the next few days," S C Khanna, secretary general, Association of Unified Service Providers of India said.
"In a letter to the Trai chairman, Pradip Baijal, we had attached certificates from six major vendors, including LG, Motorola, Samsung, Ericsson, Lucent and Nortell, clearly stating the fact that they don't manufacture equipment for bands other than the 1900 Mhz band. They want to delay our expansion plans and put our survival at stake," Khanna said.
"We note from the Authority's consultation paper that the Authority is considering the possibility for the use of the North American PCS band in India for CDMA purposes. There is, however, no specific issue that has been posed by the Authority on the pros and cons of considering the introduction of the US PCS band in India," TV Ramachandran, Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India told reporters.
"CDMA operators want to harm the GSM side with the US PCS band," Ramachandran said, adding that the IMT 2000 band was a technology-neutral band where both GSM and CDMA operators could co-exist.
Commenting on the CDMA operators submission that equipment and handsets were available only in US PCS 1900 Mhz band, he said there were 130 handsets available in the 1800 MHz band.
"The future growth and development of the Indian telecom sector and India's integration with the rest of the world will be at stake and the 30 million GSM users will be denied the opportunity to avail 3G services and seamless roaming," he said.
