Airtel, Vodafone, Idea impeding competition: Govt

The government today accused the ‘Big Three’ GSM mobile players — Airtel, Vodafone and Idea — of adopting tactics to stop the entry of new operators and hoard spectrum beyond their contractual obligations.

Arguing before telecom tribunal TDSAT on a petition filed by the Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI), the GSM lobby that challenged the government's dual spectrum policy, senior advocate Vikas Singh, appearing for the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), said: “Since the beginning, the government was aware of the tendency of these three big operators to prevent others from entering the field.”

Rejecting the COAI’s allegation that GSM spectrum was allotted to Anil Ambani-led RCom illegally, the DoT submitted that the GSM operators were just trying to delay the allotment, and rather they should look into their own case of hoarding extra spectrum.

“The spectrum which has been given to them (existing GSM players like Airtel, Vodafone and Idea) is beyond the terms of the agreement... They want to take more by depriving the new players like RCom and Tatas,” he said.

The government has been facing allegations of allotting spectrum to GSM operators in excess of the contracted 6.2 MHz and that too free-of-cost, and has asked the DoT to work out a one-time payment for the extra radio frequency held by them.

Singh further added that it was not the first time these operators were doing it. “In the case of Wireless in Local Loop (WLL) also, they did the same and delayed the whole issue by way of litigation and court proceedings," submitted Singh.

On this, the TDSAT bench headed by Justice Arun Kumar asked: “Why such haste by the government in this issue".

Replying to it, Singh submitted that “probably the government wanted to avoid these litigation this time”.