Govt to auction 700Mhz spectrum for 4G services next year

The government today said it will auction spectrum in 700 Mhz band, which is used for offering high-speed Internet services through fourth generation technologies, in 2014.

Also read: GSM subscribers down 6.62 m to 657.16 m in Dec: COAI

"We are going to auction the 700 band in any case by 2014," telecom minister Kapil Sibal said during the commissioning of country's first lab for measuring specific absorption rate (SAR) for mobile handsets.

The 700-Mhz spectrum band ranges from 698 Mhz to 806 Mhz and has been identified by the International Telecommunication Union for telecom services. "We have set up a lab in the country so that mobile phones can be tested here for electromagnetic radiations," Sibal said. 

He added more such labs will be set up across the country starting with Mumbai. The Telecommunication Engineering Centre SAR lab, which
has been commissioned at a cost of Rs 2.5 crore, is the first lab in the country for independent audit of SAR value, self-certified by mobile handset manufacturers and importers in India.

The lab is capable of making SAR measurement for CDMA, GSM 2G and 3G mobile handsets in the frequency band of 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz. The lab is also capable of making measurement of SAR value against the International Commission on non-Ionising Radio Protection (ICNIRP) limit of 2 Watt per kg measured over 10 gram of tissue as well as the recently adopted 1.6 watt per kg measured over 1 gm of tissue.

Sibal also commissioned a Next Generation Network (NGN) lab in TEC, which serves the objectives of testing and certification as well as network related study for any Internet Protocol (IP) based equipment.