Recap 2015: Green signals finally for Spectrum trading & sharing

The guidelines issued by the government came as a big respite for the industry as both buyers and sellers had been waiting for the go-ahead. 

For the last several years, the industry has been faced with a difficult situation. Although growth has returned on the back of 3G, it has not been uniformly distributed across the players. As a result, while some of the large players had been in constant need to gain more and more spectrum resources, for others the same resources had become a liability that they could not get rid of.

The earlier spectrum guidelines meant that a telco with spectrum shortfall could not buy, borrow or lease it from another telco even if the latter was sitting with idle, surplus and underutilized bands. This implied that for their new or incremental spectrum needs, the industry had to stay dependent on auctions, which could often get delayed and hence impact the business prospects at hand.

The much awaited new guidelines were issued by Department of Telecom (DoT) in October after being cleared by the Union cabinet earlier. It said all access spectrum bands earmarked for access services by the licensor DoT would be treated as tradable. However, in cases where spectrum had been acquired before the auctions, trading could be done if it was liberalized by paying the market determined price. Leasing of spectrum was ruled out.

Reliance Communications was quick to announce that it was at an advanced stage of discussions for finalizing nationwide trading and sharing arrangements with Reliance Jio in the 800 - 850 MHz band, in line with the new policies of DoT. Others including Bharti Airtel and Vodafone were also reportedly in talks to buy out additional capacities from the potential sellers.

Also Read: Movers & Shakers of Telecom in 2015