The GSM Association, a global trade group for mobile industry consisting of about 750 mobile operators, has urged the Department of Telecom (DoT) to go ahead with the 3G auctions without any further delay and also make the HSPA (High-speed Packet Access) a reality.
The delay in 3G auction in India had resulted in a $16 billion loss to the economy; the government should now carry out the auctions without any further delay, said Jaikishan Rajaraman, senior director, GSM Association, quoting a McKinsey report. He demanded that the government must allocate the 2.1 GHz spectrum to drive the deployment of mobile broadband across India. The planning phase for the allocation of 2.6 GHz spectrum must also start now if HSPA is to evolve for the benefit of the Indian population.
According to Rajaraman India will need to make further spectrum available through the digital dividend to support the delivery of more widespread coverage in rural areas.
Quoting the recent McKinsey report he said that once the licenses are issued and 20 billion invested over a period of five years, it will deliver $70 billion economic benefit in the same period. Further, a 10 per cent increase in broadband penetration can result in up to 1.5 per cent increase in GDP. Any further delay in allocation of 3G licenses will prove determinant to the economy, Rajaram claimed.
The GSMA senior director said the development of the GSM technology track (GSM/W-CADMA/HSPA) has been dramatic. In a mere ten years there has been a 1000-fold increase in the data bit rates of mobile networks, while maintaining full backwards compatibility with the very first mobile phones released in the market.
3GPP technologies will continue to evolve, with a clear road map of reaching 42 Mbps peak down link speeds with HSPA+ and exceeding 100 Mbps in the near future with LTE. This technology road map has given GSM mobile operators the confidence to deploy HSPA with more than 217 networks across the world, he dwelt.
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