Marking the first 100 days of the NDA government, Communication
and IT Minister,Ravi Shankar Prasad in a press conference said that the
department of telecommunications (DoT) would come out
with new guidelines for telecom spectrum trading and
sharing by December.
"I have told my staff to ensure that guidelines on spectrum sharing and
trading are in place by year-end. The guidelines must be fair
and objective and the consumer interests must also be kept
in mind whileframing the new guidelines",
said Ravi Shankar Prasad, Communication and IT Minister.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had in July
released the much awaited guidelines on sharing of radio frequencies
in all bands among telcos, to optimally use limited air waves. Currently,
mobile operators are allowed to share network infrastructure like mobile
towers, which has helped them reduce costs, but not air waves.
Trai has said that spectrum in different bands of spectrum
will besharable provided both the licensees are
having spectrum in the same band.
Ravi Shankar Prasad also elaborated that the entire mechanism
concerning the next round of spectrum auction scheduled to
start from February 3, 2015 has to be worked out by
the year-end to ensure that auction before
is completed during the current financial year.
The minister also hinted that more spectrum would be made
available for which his ministry is in talks with the defence ministry.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is yet to agree to release 5 MHz of
3G spectrum to DoT. Telecom companies have repeatedly proposed
that DoT swap 15 MHz of spectrum in the 1900-MHz band with an
equal quantum of radio wave in the 3G band of 2100 MHz,
unused with MoD.
A cyber security measures under Digital India programme a
'National Cyber Coordination Centre' is
also being set up for which `800 crore has been earmarked.
The government will also set up an e-governance security centre
at a cost of `270 crore for ensuring security of all e-governance initiatives
which has witnessed huge transactions. The government plans to complete
the National Optical Fibre Network by 2017. This would provide broadband services
in all 2.5 lakh panchayats at an estimated cost of `20,000 crore.
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment