Thaindian News

New Delhi, Sep 30 (IANS) Discussions are being held with the finance ministry on conducting another round of auction for bandwidth to provide broadband wireless services, the Department of Telecom (DoT) said Friday.

“In BWA (broadband wireless access), there is 20 megahertz available but not across the whole country. There is a dialogue going on with the finance ministry on whether it would undertake auction for that spectrum because that is available only in some parts of the country,” DoT Secretary R. Chandrasekhar told reporters here.

“A final decision has not been taken,” he added.

Auction of spectrum for BWA services last year fetched the government Rs.38,543.31 crore (over $8.56 billion).

Communications Minister Kapil Sibal Friday also released the National Frequency Allocation Plan 2011 (NAFP) — a policy document which contains spectrum allocation for various radio communication services in different frequency bands.

The document provides the basis for development, manufacturing and spectrum utilisation activities in the country, both for government and private sectors.

The plan, which will come into effect from Oct 1, contains international and national frequency allocation table, footnotes to international table of frequency allocations, India remark and channeling plan in different frequency bands.

“Radio spectrum is becoming increasingly important for all walks of life and needs to be managed rationally. While spectrum management has always been important, the complexity of the task has been compounded by the proliferation of both traditional and entirely new radio spectrum frequency-using services in recent years,” said Sibal.

The National Telecom Policy 2011 will be released in October, he added.