Teleco body wants waves allotted without auctions | Economic Times

The ITU-APT Foundation of India (IAFI), a telecom industry body, has sought to delicense spectrum in the V-band (60 GHz range), which will allow it to be allocated without auctions and thus keep costs low, helping bridge the digital divide through the government's 'WiFi-for-all' initiative."We strongly recommend that the ministry of communications should immediately delicense the V-band in line with other developing and developed countries to support innovation by our engineers in line with the global ecosystem for low-cost outdoor Wi-Fi and fixed wireless networks," IAFI president Bharat B Bhatia said in a September 22 letter to telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.IAFI represents the likes of Facebook, Viasat, Telesat, OneWeb and Inmarsat.The delicensing of the V-band has been strongly opposed by telecom carriers, who fear that if done, broadband players will use those airwaves to offer similar competitive services but without licensing conditions attached.Telcos say delicensing the band - which offers high capacity access spectrum for voice and data services as well as backhaul link - will lead to loss of revenue to the government as these bands have a very high commercial value. The band, in the future, can also be used to offer 5G services, and hence the allocation methodology should be the same as other 5G spectrum bands, which is auction.But broadband lobby group argued that the V-band has already been delicensed in as many as 70 countries, and would immensely benefit India's economy and act as a social good in line with the National Digital Communications Policy (NDCP) 2018. It added that delicensing the band will boost the economy far beyond the revenue 'lost' by not auctioning the spectrum."The V-band offers a wireless solution that can speedily help meet the aspirations of PM-WANI as these bands can be deployed as an alternative solution to backhaul the large traffic in urban, suburban and rural environments while considerably reducing right-of-way hurdles," the seven-page letter added.PM-WANI, or Prime Minister's WiFi Access Network Interface, is an initiative designed to expand broadband across the country.Bhatia further said the V-band offers unique features, such as gigabit speeds, short range, and a lack of interference due to oxygen absorption within its frequency range that makes the band ideal for shared unlicensed use. In 2015, following a reference from the Department of Telecommunications, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had recommended that the V-band should be delicensed for indoor and outdoor based access applications such as Wi-Fi hotspots.