Vodafone seeks allocation of airwaves in 200 KHz blocks

British telecom major Vodafone has demanded that new spectrum allocations be made in blocks of 200 KHz instead of present practice of allocating the scarce resource in bigger chunks of 1.25 MHz, to curb wastages.

TRAI has started fresh consultation process for valuation and reserve price of spectrum for third round of auction, after failure of two rounds which industry had attributed to high base price.

TRAI has invited comments on the quantity of spectrum that should be kept for auction, time that winner of airwaves should be given to roll out network and the method to be used for valuation and estimation of reserve price.

Stating that block size of 1.25 MHz is out of alignment with the current spectrum usage charges (SUC) slabs which results in "discrimination and non-level playing field, Vodafone said players which got airwaves in the November 2012 auction, end up paying higher SUC as compared to the older operators.

"a licensee who acquired 5 MHz in the November 2012 auctions will not only waste 0.05 MHz in every carrier if the spectrum is used for GSM, but also pay a higher SUC compared to the other operators," Vodafone said.

The government had allocated spectrum to the winners of November 2012 auction in block size of 1.25 MHz in 1800 MHz band.

"change of allocation block size from the earlier 200 KHz to the 1.25MHz in 1800 bands in the November auctions has resulted in a situation where spectrum is both unwillingly wasted by operators and unintentionally left idle by the Government," Vodafone India said in its communication to TRAI.

The operator appealed to TRAI to auction spectrum in 200 KHz lot sizes that will eliminate all of the inefficiency and wastage inherent in auction in block sizes of 1.25MHz.