Mobile phone
services companies require spectrum for their services for carrying the voice,
data and messages. Spectrum is nothing but electro -magnetic waves in the air.
It is the property of the nation and hence is a public good. Then why it should
be allotted to the private telecom operators at dead cheap rates? The Supreme
Court cancelled 122 licenses granted in 2008 for the private telecom operators on the
ground that the allotment of spectrum at dead cheap rate on the basis of first
come first serve rule violating the Government of India’s Transaction of
business rules was illegal. But on the same grounds, the allotment of 73
licenses along with allotment of spectrum during the period 2001 to 2007 was
also illegal. Similarly the allotment of 37 licenses where the GSM spectrum was
allotted to CDMA spectrum holders during this period also were illegal. Since
the case of the illegality of these 110(73+37) licenses did not come before the
Supreme Court, these licenses were not cancelled.
Thus altogether
122+110=232 licenses are required to be cancelled along with the cancellation
of the allotment of spectrum to them. The spectrum allotted to them has to be
taken back by the Government and it has to be auctioned. But who will
participate in the auction? The Companies like Uninor, Sistema(MTS), Loop etc
whose licenses were cancelled by the Supreme Court are demanding that only they
should be allowed in the auction and not the older licensees like Airtel, Vodafone
etc whose licenses are not cancelled. But the older licensees are demanding
that they also should be allowed in the auction. Each group is interpreting the
Supreme Court judgment in its favor for this purpose. Each group is bringing
pressure on the Government.
But the question
is why should the spectrum which is the natural resource and hence property of
the nation be allotted to these private operators who are greedy for profits
without caring for the self reliant development of the telecom sector? They
have procured all the equipment required for the expansion of their network
from the foreign telecom equipment manufacturers and thus handed over more than
5 lakh crore rupees to these foreign
companies, thus causing a huge drain of our valuable resources to the foreign countries
and killing our indigenous manufacture of telecom equipment and killing the
domestic research and development in telecom technology. They also are causing threat
to our national security by allowing the foreign telecom equipment
manufacturers to install, maintain and operate their telecom networks.
The only way out
for a self reliant development of our telecom sector is to nationalize all these
private telecom companies so that the telecom services are maintained by the
public sector in the interest of the country and the people.
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కామెంట్ను పోస్ట్ చేయండి