Cabinet Secy calls meeting with DoT, Defence on spectrum release

With the government firm on auctioning 3G spectrum before this year end, Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar has called a meeting on September 11 with Department of Telecom and Defence Ministry secretaries to expedite release of radio waves for sale.

"Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar will chair a meeting with the secretaries of both the ministries to discuss the Memorandum of Understanding between them in May this year for release of spectrum", a senior DoT official said. 

According to the MoU signed by the two sides, the defence will release 25 Mhz of 3G spectrum and 20 Mhz of 2G spectrum. Of this, it will immediately release 10 Mhz of spectrum for 3G spectrum and 5 Mhz for existing 2G cellular services.    

The spectrum scenario is not very good, although DoT claims that it can go ahead with the auction without defence releasing any frequency.    

But with Rajasthan still not having any 3G spectrum and there being only 15 Mhz available in an important circle like Delhi, the government does not want to send a picture of scarcity of spectrum to the potential bidders.    

On August 28, an empowered group of ministers (EGoM) headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had fixed the reserve price for 3G pan-India licence at Rs 3,500 crore. The eGoM also decided to restrict the number of players in each circle to five, including one slot for PSUs BSNL and MTNL.