COAI comes heavily on Tatas

COAI has strongly criticized Tata’s stand on the new spectrum policy to which Tatas had filed objections. It is very well known that Tatas first joined the IDEA consortium and then backed out of IDEA when the Ambanis lobbied with late Shri Pramod Mahajan for CDMA technology to join the telecom war using CDMA. Guess strategists and decision makers in the Tata house were a confused lot 😉

“Tatas first alleged that the subscriber numbers of the other operators were fudged. Now they accede that other operators have a headstart. Strangely, they expect front runners in a fiercely competitive marketplace to stop running in the race so that a laggard (the Tatas) can catch up,” said TV Ramachandran, director general of COAI.

It has been the policy of the government since 2002 that operators with a higher market share need more spectrum. This found favour with all operators including the Tatas. Why this opposition so late in the day? said CEO of a leading Cellco.

Clearly the Tatas are levelling baseless allegations against competitive GSM operators who have revolutionized cell technology in India. The Tatas are a distant second in the CDMA space losing heavily to Reliance Infocom.