The Day Two of the open session being conducted by TRAI to seek industry views on spectrum management and review of licence terms & conditions saw the participants discussing on the quantum of spectrum to be allotted to each player and whether any price is to be paid for future spectrum allotted.

New entrants backed by incumbent CDMA operators sounded unanimous as they reasoned that GSM operators do not need more than 6.2 MHz in any circle to serve the subscribers. To this, TRAI member, R.N.Prabhakar asked TTSL the reason for seeking spectrum beyond the allotted 4.4 MHz start-up spectrum.

The meet was then divided amongst those who supported market price for any new spectrum to be allotted and those who claimed right over the spectrum citing the free allocation of additional spectrum made out to incumbent GSM operators.

Opposing this claim, Bharti Airtel’s representative, Narender Gupta said that while his company was paying almost Rs 120 crores annually, RCom and TTSL were paying Rs 21 crore and Rs 19 crore respectively on per MHz for the same amount of spectrum to the government. According to TRAI report for September 2009, Bharti Airtel paid Rs 242.09 crore as annual spectrum charges while RCom and TTSL paid Rs 45 crore.

Allotted GSM Spectrum are as on March''09
Allotted CDMA Spectrum are taken from TRAI recommendation issued on 28th Aug'2007.
Spectrum charges are taken from Quarterly published report of TRAI (i.e. Q2 - 2009-10)