TRAI’s projection of the country registering more than one billion mobile subscribers has the industry divided with the GSM lobby and the CDMA lobby having contrasting views on the issue.

TRAI while inviting industry views on various issues related to future spectrum policy roadmap had presented its projections for the mobile subscriber base to be achieved collectively by the operators. The regulator’s projections pegged the mobile subscriber base to scale the one billion mark by 2014.

Responding to this new entrants Datacom, STEL as well as incumbents Bharti Airtel, Aircel, Loop, MTNL, COAI and Idea Cellular readily agreed to the projections. Vodafone Essar while agreeing to the projections in general questioned the logic behind linking the projections with the spectrum needs. According to the company spectrum and M&A should be considered while determining projections. It said without spectrum reforms the projections will be hard to achieve.

Etisalat while agreeing said that its projections estimate a subscriber base of 930.94 million by 2014.

CDMA players however were more vocal in their views on the subscriber projections.  Tata Teleservices expects the country to achieve 838 million subscribers by 2014 while Sistema Shyam predicts only 700 million subscribers. Theese operators contend that TRAI while determing its projections is merely banking on past growth trends. According to these operators the market environment has changed and will change further in next few years and hence it is difficult for the operators to actually match the regulator’s projections.

AUSPI too has projected subscriber base of 903 million by 2014 which again implies its opposition to the regulator’s projections.

Reliance Communications provided a comprehensive view point on the subject. According to it the projections are inflated by about 25%. The company has blamed declining subscriber growth trends, multiple SIM usage 30-40% of the Indian population falling under the poverty line, population demographics where 25% of the total population is under 14 years of age, saturation in metros and wrong consideration of S-Curve & Gompertz Curve by the regulator while determining the projections. It has asked the regulator to follow government’s projections of 700 million subscribers by 2012.

The subscriber projections hold importance since future spectrum policy and allocation will be devised upon these projections. GSM operators have been calling for release of more spectrum to meet the growing demand. CDMA operators who have now turned dual-tech players oppose this demand from GSM players as they apprehend that incumbent GSM operators may gain competitive advantage if they acquire any more spectrum. CDMA operators want the government to limit the grant of spectrum to 6.2 MHz for GSM operators.