According to sources, a parliamentary committee has requested a factual statement from the Ministry of Communications about claims that its telecoms department permitted the surrender of spectrum that telecom companies had purchased at auction prior to 2022.
A critical observation in the 2015 CAG report pertaining to the communications and IT sector regarding the “lack of due diligence in auction of spectrum for Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) services” was brought up by the committee led by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey in a communication to the ministry. The CAG had noted that there were inadequacies in the Notice Inviting Applications for the BWA auction regarding the spectrum utilization scope for various licensee classes.
The committee stated that the audit watchdog had seen that despite the use of spectrum was controlled by their individual licenses, the operators of the Internet service provider (ISP) and the Unified Access Services/Cable Modem Termination System (UAS/CMTS) were permitted to bid for the same BWA frequency. The CAG said, “This led to post-auction demand by M/s Infotel for network codes which would have enabled them to provide voice services beyond the scope of their ISP licence. DoT facilitated the request by permitting them to migrate to Unified Licence after the auction.”
It added, “This migration, allowed at prices discovered in 2001, resulted in undue advantage of 3,367.29 crore to M/s Reliance Jio Infocomm (formerly M/s Infotel). It was also seen that even after four years of auction, the rollout of BWA services has been negligible.” The panel has requested a factual statement from the ministry, citing the CAG’s observations and some recent allegations that assert the Department of Telecommunications permitted the surrender of spectrum that telecom companies had purchased at auction prior to 2022.
