COAI's preliminary comments on TRAI's 3G recommendations

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The COAI and the GSM industry are greatly appreciative of the speedy manner in which the TRAI have completed deep and extensive consultations with all stake holders and come out with comprehensive recommendations on 3G and BWA for the Government to consider and formulate a road map for India in these crucial fields.

Mr. T. V. Ramachandran, Director General, COAI stated that one of the most important of the recommendations of TRAI relate to the system of spectrum management. The Authority has very rightly noted the legacy influences on the prevailing systems and pointed out that "considering the growth and development of wireless technologies and services, long term view on overall spectrum management policy including the organizational structure for spectrum management is necessary". They have rightly stated that  a liberal and transparent approach is necessary so that it matches  with the overall policy  approach and that the entire  subject needs to be dealt with  keeping in view  the long term policy requirement and  should not be handled in a piecemeal  manner. They have recommended a National Frequency Management Board (NFMB) to coordinate the availability of spectrum.

However, the COAI is concerned that, on the whole, the TRAI recommendations are rather slanted in favour of CDMA and disadvantageous to GSM.

The following areas of deep concern need to be addressed when the Government considers the recommendations:-

1. At the outset, COAI believes that the route of auction and high reserve price would be very harmful for reaching the benefits of 3G in an affordable manner to the citizens of India. COAI reiterates that the Government should seek to enhance its revenues for 3G through usage and not by imposing high initial fees. The benefits of this approach have been proven in the NTP 99 migration, and it is surprising that we are not continuing to apply those lessons. 

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