TRAI chief, Mr. Misra has now come up openly against A. Raja, on whose behest the DoT operates. Mr. Misra alleges that DoT has not accepted TRAI’s recommendations on Spectrum allocation in its entirety and has modified to favor CDMA operators [ Reliance Communications ]. Mr. Misra raised his voice as DoT informed the Telecom tribunal that it was going by the recommendations of TRAI, which is untrue. Mr. Misra, said,
Though for CDMA technology, subscriber base criteria recommended by TRAI for getting 5 MHz (of spectrum) has been accepted in totality, however, in the case of GSM spectrum, a new slab of 7.2 MHz has been created. Thus the DoT’s decision is not as per the authority’s recommendation. Therefore, the authority is of the opinion that the DoT’s averment that TRAI’s recommendation on allotment of spectrum has been accepted will not be correct.
Mr. Misra further pointed out that how state owned BSNL was favored against the interests of everybody.
The recent order where subscriber-linked criteria for spectrum up to 7.2 MHz in GSM technology…. will create an atmosphere of uncertainty and non-level playing field in this sector… It is noted that DoT has separately allotted spectrum to BSNL and MTNL recently beyond 10 MHz.
This is for the second time in the past two months that Mr. A.Raja has acted as a representative of Reliance Communications in the Government of India. Earlier he accepted Mobile Number Portability recommendations in part facing criticism from TRAI.