A committee tasked with finding ways of segregating revenues of broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum from 2G and 3G services has said there’s no foolproof mechanism to do so. The panel has come to the conclusion after going through several options, including the ones suggested by Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, the two operators who have spectrum in 2,300 MHz (BWA) and 1,800, 900 and 2,100 Mhz (2G & 3G).
The four-member committee was constituted by the department of telecommunications after the government decided there would be differential spectrum usage charge (SUC) for BWA operators and those who held 2G and 3G spectrum. While operators holding 2G and 3G spectrum are required to pay SUC at the rate of 5% of adjusted gross revenue, BWA operators need to pay only 1%. Crucial to the implementation of this measure is to put in a mechanism to segregate the revenues so that there’s no arbitrage to operators who hold both bands of spectrum.
In its report, the committee has said that to segregate revenues, the call detail record (CDR) will have to be relied upon. There are two important parameters in the CDR which can be used to identify the spectrum used during an event which results in generation of CDR ? RAT parameter and Cell ID parameter. However, the committee has highlighted the deficiencies in both to effectively segregate revenue and thus check losses for the government.
With regard to the RAT parameter, it says that if this is deployed only in the case of LTE using 2,300 Mhz spectrum and some other technology like 2G/3G is used in other bands like 900/1,800 Mhz band, then RAT can distinctly identify the usage of 2,300 Mhz band. However, if an operator deploys LTE technology in both 2,300 and 1,800 Mhz then the distinction can?t be made.
The report has said that currently Bharti Airtel is planning to deploy LTE only in the 2,300 Mhz so a distinction can be made but if later it starts deploying LTE in 1,800 Mhz as well, the distinction would blur. In the case of Reliance Jio it has said the operator plans to deploy LTE on both 2,300 and 1,800 so RAT would be ineffective.
The other parameter to distinguish the usage of both bands is Cell ID. The report has said that Cell ID can be made unique to each base station radiating either 2,300 Mhz or 1,800 Mhz for deployment of LTE technology. However, there are challenges in achieving the unique Cell ID for each base station as Cell ID can be configured remotely through man machine commands. A Cell ID assigned for a base station in 2,300 Mhz can be assigned to the base station in 1,800 Mhz on a different occasion due to technical reasons. Further, it is also prone to tampering.
