Indian Government should defer 5G auction by 3-5 years: PHDCCI

PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry has asked the Department of Telecom (DoT) to delay the auction of 5G spectrum by at least 3 to 5 years so that the government gets proper valuations of 5G spectrum.

The Department of Telecom intends to auction 5G spectrum sometime this year only after having already missed their 2019 deadline.

At the curtain raiser of Telecom Summit 2020 with the theme ‘5G Technology: Forging Ahead into a Smarter India’, PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry's Telecom Committee Chairman Sandeep Aggarwal said that the government should not charge a license fee to the operators for the next 2-3 years after the auction. The government should also charge reasonable prices for 5G waves to make it sustainable as present economic scenario is not good.

The base price for the 5G spectrum auction has been proposed by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and the Indian government is not keen to reduce prices of 5G spectrum for the next round of auction.

“If 5G spectrum is auctioned now, the license fees would be frozen for the next 20 years and the government will lose money. Also the operators will also lose since they will be able to monetize bandwidth only after 3-5 years,” said Sandeep Aggarwal, Chairman- Telecom Committee, PHDCCI.

PHD Chamber in its budget suggestions also recommended declaring ‘Broadband a ‘utility’.

According to Aggarwal, the Centre, State and Local authorities should be obliged to improve building codes to include common duct along all roads from National highways, colony roads. Local bodies will also need to make arrangements so that all new houses/ buildings should have high quality broadband connections.

“The Indian telecom operators have already invested 150 billion USD in current technology and will be investing 100 Billion USD more to roll out newer technologies. To help the operators, government should launch Telecom Finance Corporation to provide domestic line of credit funding to telcos to procure domestic PMI compliant Equipment,” added Aggarwal.