Editorial – September 2020

TV Ramachandran is the founder and CEO of Advisory@tvr, an ICT consultancy which provides advisory services in policy and regulatory matters in the field of telecom. He founded this company in 2015 and has a portfolio of clients. And he has been a director in a company by the name of XiFi Smart Networks Pvt Ltd, whose stated business is deployment of WiFi hotspots in urban and rural areas. A telecom industry veteran, Mr Ramachandran founded Broadband India Forum (BIF) in 2015 as an industry body ostensibly for research purposes.

However, BIF is no neutral think tank; it is a foil for lobbying for free spectrum. It is very patent that Mr Ramachandran has a big conflict of interest as his clients operate in this space. But he is being actively aided and supported by senior officers in Trai and DoT.

Lobbying efforts are on to get highly valuable spectrum in E&V bands in the range of Rs 2.57 lakh crore-Rs 6.42 lakh crore. The design is to get this spectrum free for an entry fee of Rs 10,000 only. The DoT has spun a tale of broadband rollout through Public Data Offices and likened the PDOs with the PCO revolution of earlier decades. Nothing of this sort is going to happen. After the spread of 4G, the broadband situation has completely changed. Trai’s consultation paper and recommendations on proliferation of broadband through public WiFi networks are expired documents and now have only historical value, they have no functional utility as they are clearly dated. Moreover, the services offered by the PDO aggregators will be tariff-bearing, there are not going to be any free public hotspot, so there is no public service principle operative here.

Then why should spectrum in E&V bands be given away for free. All scarce natural resources must be allocated in a transparent, non-discriminatory manner, which means auction. This principle was established in the Supreme Court 2G judgement. The Attorney General of India opined recently that if there are multiple buyers of the spectrum, it must be auctioned. COAI has also written to the government stating that the existing telecom operators want to buy spectrum through competitive auction method. However, Mr Ramachandran and some select officers are lobbying hard to ensure that the E&V band spectrum is allocated free. If they succeed, it would mean huge revenue damage for the government.