Telecom Secretary to meet industry on November 5

Telecom Secretary Rakesh Garg is scheduled to hold his first round-table meeting with the industry players to discuss problems in the sector and the proposals to resolve them.
"DoT has sent invite for a round-table meeting under chairmanship of Telecom Secretary on November 5 to discuss and resolve industry problems. This is first time Secretary has called for round-table since he took charge in July," a senior member of an industry association told PTI.
Telecom operators have frequently raised issues of spectrum crunch and delay in processing at the DoT. The telecom department is yet to notify various rules like graded penalty system, spectrum trading and sharing etc which has been approved by inter-ministerial panel Telecom Commission.

On Thursday, Garg met Airtel and Vodafone representatives to discuss issues raised by the companies pertaining to delay in spectrum allocation and measures to reduce its adverse impact on mobile services in Delhi.
The DoT allocated all spectrum to telecom operators that they won in February 2014 auction on October 10. Licences of Airtel and Vodafone in Delhi are expiring at the end of November.
These companies have approached telecom regulator TRAI saying they will need at least 6 months to adjust their network as per the new frequencies allocated to them which in turn may result in poor mobile services from December onwards.

Domestic manufacturers have sought reservation of small amount of spectrum to use it for testing purpose to develop telecom network products ingeniously. DoT had earlier agreed to the proposal but is yet to assign spectrum to local players.