Technoglitch
Core Member
The Economic Times reports that the Broadband India Forum (BIF) wrote to the country’s Telecom Secretary Rakesh Garg requesting that Microsoft be required to bid for the frequencies it wants to use, rather than giving them to the company for free.
BIF represents major communication companies in the country, including Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Vodafone, Qualcomm, Ericsson, Intel and Bharat Sanchar Nigam. The letter to Garg is obviously an attempt to keep new competition at bay.
In its letter to Garg, BIF said:
Since TV UHF spectrum has excellent propagation characteristics, making it ideal for both in-building data services and rural coverage, it must be auctioned, given the limited amount of spectrum available for mobile services in the conventional 800, 900, 1800, 2100 MHz bands.
BIF didn’t specifically name Microsoft, but has identified the spectrum of frequencies the Redmond giant has chalked out for deploying broadband in rural India.
The company plans to take advantage of the unused spectrum between TV channels, known as ‘white space’, for its project. In its testing, it managed tosuccessfully bring a rural school online in Andhra Pradesh.
BIF president TV Ramachandran said that Microsoft’s idea is “quite misleading”, as there is “no genuine TV white space” in India: “We actually have wide open spectrum spaces since with only one terrestrial broadcaster (Doordarshan, the government-run television organization), the airwaves in the relevant TV UHF band remain largely unutilized.”
It’s not the first time Indian companies have tried to block Microsoft’s rural broadband plans. The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) — of which Ramachandran is the director general — had previously urged Garg to involve all licensed telecom operators in the white space technology field trials “since they involve installation of telegraph and provision of services to the customer, which is governed by the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885”.
The move to involve Microsoft in spectrum auctions is warranted, in that it should pay for the necessary frequencies and the opportunity to deploy communication services just as other players in the space have.
Microsoft should pay for spectrum to offer internet in rural India
BIF represents major communication companies in the country, including Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Vodafone, Qualcomm, Ericsson, Intel and Bharat Sanchar Nigam. The letter to Garg is obviously an attempt to keep new competition at bay.
In its letter to Garg, BIF said:
Since TV UHF spectrum has excellent propagation characteristics, making it ideal for both in-building data services and rural coverage, it must be auctioned, given the limited amount of spectrum available for mobile services in the conventional 800, 900, 1800, 2100 MHz bands.
BIF didn’t specifically name Microsoft, but has identified the spectrum of frequencies the Redmond giant has chalked out for deploying broadband in rural India.
The company plans to take advantage of the unused spectrum between TV channels, known as ‘white space’, for its project. In its testing, it managed tosuccessfully bring a rural school online in Andhra Pradesh.
BIF president TV Ramachandran said that Microsoft’s idea is “quite misleading”, as there is “no genuine TV white space” in India: “We actually have wide open spectrum spaces since with only one terrestrial broadcaster (Doordarshan, the government-run television organization), the airwaves in the relevant TV UHF band remain largely unutilized.”
It’s not the first time Indian companies have tried to block Microsoft’s rural broadband plans. The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) — of which Ramachandran is the director general — had previously urged Garg to involve all licensed telecom operators in the white space technology field trials “since they involve installation of telegraph and provision of services to the customer, which is governed by the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885”.
The move to involve Microsoft in spectrum auctions is warranted, in that it should pay for the necessary frequencies and the opportunity to deploy communication services just as other players in the space have.
Microsoft should pay for spectrum to offer internet in rural India
