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Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has sought views of the industry stakeholders on whether or not it should allocate a large chunk of 700 MHz spectrum to the Indian Railways for passenger safety and security applications, as per an ET Telecom report. Since this spectrum will be allocated to Indian Railways for free, the government believes that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will be giving up an opportunity of netting approximately Rs 1 lakh crore in the upcoming auctions for 4G and 5G spectrum. In this related development, the Railways has asked the department of telecom to set aside 15 units of spectrum in the 700 Mhz band and initially allocate ten units free of cost.
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Railways Requests 700 MHz Premium Spectrum for Safety Applications
The Department of Telecommunications, on the other hand, had referred the matter to the telecom regulatory back in February 2019. On this, the telecom regulator said that if the railway’s request is granted for allocating this spectrum, then the residue of the spectrum left in the 700 Mhz band would not be sufficient for 4G and 5G spectrum, and thus it would again boost the pricing of the already expensive airwaves. To recall, the telecom operators had given the 700 Mhz a miss on the grounds that the spectrum was overpriced.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), in a discussion paper said that the spectrum which has been requested by the Indian Railways from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) would fetch Rs 1 lakh crore upfront with the allocation happening for an indefinite period for 15 units and 10 units initially. Further, over a period of 20 years, it would fetch a few thousand crores in the form of spectrum usage charge (SUC) which would be accruable quarterly.
