(Economic Times via NewsEdge) India's GSM operators, through their industry body, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), opposed a proposal from Tata Tele asking the government to impose a charge on any operator offering 3G services within the existing 2G spectrum allocated to it.
'Such a proposal seeks to cause grievous harm to the sector and severely impact the efforts of the industry to meet the aggressive telecom objectives that have been laid down by the government,' the COAI said.
Tata Tele has also proposed that all future allocation of 2G spectrum should be charged 50% of the price established for 3G spectrum.
This is because, going forward, it would be difficult to slot services into so-called '2G' and '3G' buckets, it said.
According to Tata Tele, GSM operators such as Bharti have greater spectrum allocation and can thus offer 3G services on their 2G bands, but CDMA players would find it difficult to offer similar data heavy applications as their 2G spectrum allocation is half that of their GSM counterparts.
Besides, EDGE, which is described by ITU as a 3G service, is already being offered in several circles by GSM operators, but CDMA operators have been prevented from deploying EV-DO, another 3G technology, in their current spectrum band.
The COAI however said GSM carriers "fail to understand the need for a new pricing approach when there is already a clear, well defined 2G spectrum allotment policy in place."
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