Countering allegations of Qualcomm about India’s mobile spectrum policy, COAI issued a notification that it does not favor either GSM or CDMA but has set a level playing field and encourages both the technologies to co-exist for the benefit of consumers and FreeMarkets.
COAI, clarified its stand in a letter addressed to Telecom Minister, Dayanidhi Maran
We respectfully submit that the truth is, in fact, the exact opposite, since the CDMA operators not only have a huge initial advantage over GSM as a result of paying a lower entry fee, but also continue to enjoy an enormous ongoing advantage in terms of lower annual spectrum usage charges.
This effectively means that CDMA operators actually paid only around one-fifth the price that the spectrum/licence would have attracted if the same had been acquired in the open market.
Under the above circumstances, it is submitted that the CDMA demand for equal MHz spectrum is completely untenable, if the current policy is maintained, would perpetuate a digital divide in India over the long term by keeping Indian customers on limited voice only 2G services.
It is understood that if CDMA operators migrate to full mobility under Unified Access Licensing(UAL), they would have paid lower entry fee(compared to GSM operators) and would have had access to five times the spectrum capacity than GSM operators have. Qualcomm needs to understand that the economics works different in India than the rest of the world. Indians have to achieve world standards with limited resources 🙂