New Ringtone

New Delhi, Sept. 11: New entrants in telecom will have to shell out more to offer 3G services.

Not only should they have prior experience in 3G but they should also give an undertaking to obtain a unified access service licence.

These were some of the amendments made today by the department of telecommunications (DoT) in the allocation and pricing of spectrum for third-generation (3G) services.

Foreign players such as America’s AT&T, Germany’s Deutsche Telekom and Japan’s NTT DoCoMo, which are keen on entering the Indian market, will have to pay an additional entry fee of Rs 1,650 crore to acquire a unified licence to qualify for 3G services. This is in addition to the bids that they must submit for a pan-India 3G licence, which is expected to be Rs 2,020 crore.

The DoT has also decided to auction 3G spectrum for CDMA players in the 800 Mhz band. It has mandated that the reserve price for the auction of one block of 2x1.25 Mhz spectrum in the band should be 25 per cent of the reserve price for 2x5 Mhz spectrum in the 2.1 Ghz band, which is reserved for GSM players.

Currently, only one operator can be accommodated in the 800Mhz band as the rest of it is occupied by the defence authorities, who need at least a year to vacate the band.

In annual spectrum charges, the DoT has amended the norms, with operators asked to pay the charges at the rate of one per cent on the “incremental revenue due to 3G services” after a period of one year. The methodology for calculating the incremental revenue will be notified later.

The earlier rule had said that 3G players pay an annual spectrum fee of one per cent of the annual gross revenue after a period of one year.

WiMax rule

The DoT has amended the norms for WiMax services as well and introduced a new frequency band of 2.3 Ghz in addition to the previously notified 2.5 Ghz band for spectrum allocation. It also changed the rollout obligations for WiMax services, removing the clause of covering specific areas at the end of two years from the spectrum allocation date.

The agency to conduct 3G and WiMax spectrum will be in place by the end of this month.