COAI moves HC against tribunal order

In a major move today, the four GSM operators "" Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and Spice "" have come together and approached the Delhi High Court against telecom tribunal TDSAT's interim order not to stay the spectrum allocation process.

Represented by GSM lobby Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the four GSM operators have filed a writ petition in the high court against the non-speaking interim order given by the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT), on December 12.

The TDSAT's interim order had refused to stay the issuance of spectrum which was voluntarily imposed by the government.

According to the COAI, the TDSAT order would allow the government to proceed with the allocation of GSM spectrum to CDMA operators, creating irreversible third party rights and thus rendering entire petition of COAI infructuous.

COAI, in its statement, said: "An offer for equivalent spectrum at a price of Rs 2,650 crore made by Bharti Airtel has been disregarded whilst a lower offer of Rs 1,650 crore by a large CDMA player (meaning Reliance Communications) has been accepted, thus causing a huge loss to the government exchequer and is also against public interest."

The decision of the Department of Telecom (DoT) is an attempt to overturn the well set practice of addressing spectrum and licence requirements in sequence based on the date of application, COAI said.

The government had on October 19 announced new norms which allowed the use of dual technology by a single operator in the same circle and enhanced subscriber base for allocation of additional spectrum. However, the COAI had challenged the norms in the TDSAT.

After this, the government had also set up an official panel to review the Telecom Engineering Centre's recommendations of spectrum allocation.

To the dismay of GSM operators, the panel has said the TEC or the TRAI criteria for subscriber-linked allocation should be adopted which would seriously impact additional allocation of spectrum to existing operators.