In a bid to increase availability of bandwidth for the fast-growing small and medium enterprises segment, the Department of Telecommunications today permitted the resale of International Private Leased Circuits (IPLC). To boost competition and affordability in the IPLC segment, the DoT has created a new category of licence called “Resale of IPLC Service” that will be permitted to enter into agreements for leased line with access providers, national long distance service providers and international long distance service providers for provision of IPLC to end customers.
Telecom Minister A Raja on Wednesday ruled out auction of 2G spectrum and said that the department is in discussion with finance ministry to charge a one-time fee on the extra radio waves to the operators beyond the initial start-up spectrum. The Minister said,
It (one-time charge on 2G spectrum) has been discussed and is going to be discussed in the Telecom Commission in consultation with the finance ministry and one-time charges will be for the 2G spectrum for over 6.2 Mhz spectrum.
This will only affect established GSM players[Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular] because companies like RCom and Tata Teleservices have gotten similar amount of spectrum under two different technologies, CDMA and GSM.
