The letter, which has been seen by Mint, also concerns trillions of rupees that have been drawn over by Indian Earth Internet operators in spectrum auctions over the years, and insists that the satellite internet will compete more to terrestrial services rather than to add.
The letter also states that the objective of the use of satellite services to bridge the urban digital abyss will not be met with current recommendations and called on the center to create a committee for a comprehensive review.
Read also: Bharti Airtel Q4 Preview: Low -East Business Departure to Weigh Revenue Growth
Concerns have appeared at a time when satellite internet services such as Starlink, Eutelsat Oneweb, Jio Satellite and Amazon’s Kuiper are preparing to start services in India. Currently, the recommendations of the telecommunications regulatory body (trai) take place with the Ministry of Telecommunications (DOT).
Trai recommended administrative allocation of the spectrum, unlike auctions, for satellite Internet services. Said that SATCOM will have to pay annual fees for the spectrum of either 4% of their modified gross income (AGR) or £3 500 on MHz, depending on what is higher.
Certainly, SATCOM operators will also have to pay an annual license fee of 8% of AGR to the Government, according to the current Terms of Performance Dot.
In addition, Trai recommended another annual fee £500 on subscribers for such service providers in urban areas.
“Recommendations for spectrum-on 4% AGR-bez of any entry/payments initial payment are not in line with the approach in the case of administrative spectrum and is without any justification, empirical analysis, international comparison or economic justification,” SP Kochhar, director. To conceal the gender, he affected the 29.
Read also: £ 1 000-Crore annual research and development within telecommunications policy “> Telecom Tech Next-Gen £1,000-Crore annual research and development within telecommunications policy
The letter was also marked by Trai Anil Kumar Lahoti, Secretary of Economic Affairs Ajay Seth, Secretary of DPIit AmarDeep Singh Bhatia, Secretary of Meita S. Krishnan and members of the Digital Communication Commission (DCC). DPIIT concerns the Ministry of Industry and Internal Trade and Meita concerns the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
The government official said coin on the state of anonymity that the same issue of field playing was raised during the consultations by Telcos. “Trai acknowledged this and its recommendations are based on facts,” the official said. “Now the Dot (department of Telecommunications) must call.”
Questions sent to Coai, Dot and Trai on Sunday did not cause any answer until the press time.
The field of playing at the level or not
Kochhar in the letter said that trai for £3 500 on MHz hub. According to telecommunications operators, the price for MHz should be equivalent or at least comparable to the terrestrial and satellite internet services, especially if they are used to address the same consumers for the same services.
“The principles of equity and non -discrimination require that if the spectrum for satellite services is to be assigned administratively rather than auction, its prices must adequately reflect parity with auction discovering rates valid for the terrestrial spectrum in comparable frequency bands,” Kochhar said.
Certainly, telecommunications operators such as Bharti Airtel and Jio work with American player Satcom SpaceX to distribute Starlink satellite services in India. However, operators have identified concerns about the sustainability of Satcom services in the event that the recommendations of Trai are carried out in its current form.
The key problem for the operator is the alleged underestimation of the potential capacities of the trai satellite networks, while perhaps overvaliding the ground networks in achieving prices, the operators said.
Read also: Airtel, Google Team Up to face Jio’s Free Cloud Blitz with 100 GB storage
“This resulted in a defective basis for the whole exercise,” Kochhar said in a letter Dot. “The use of accurate capacity data from both terrestrial and satellite operators would bring a more transparent and reliable assessment of the relevant capacities of satellite and earth networks.”
In its recommendations, Trai said that network capacities of the main providers of satellite services for the provision of satellite broadband connections in India are estimated to be 0.6 Tbps of up to 3 TBP in almost middle period compared to 168 TBP for ground networks. However, telecommunications operators have said that companies like Kuiper and Starlink are expected to have 51 TBP and 83 TBPs over the India.
With this explanation, the operators faced the TRAI argument that satellite internet services would be complementary for telecommunications operators.
On 9 May, the chairman of the Trai Anil Kumar Lahoti said during the media briefing that after a detailed examination of the real field for playing at the VS Trai level, she found that “satellite services would be complementary and not competing to earthly services”.
“Since the satellite spectrum is a shared swimming pool, these two (earthly and satellites) cannot be appreciated on par,” Lahoti said, adding that he recommends assigning a spectrum for five years because Satcom is currently in a nascent phase and their business potential would appear.
Rivals, not partners
Telecommunications operators said that with planned capacities of 29 billion GB of data per month, companies such as Kuiper and Starlink are well placed to serve significant parts of growing Indian demand for telecommunications. According to the letter it is more than 23 billion GB of operators.
Trai recommendations create a substantial regulatory arbitration, the letter said that because they do not realize that in fact, satellite communication services are rapidly appearing as full -fledged competitors on the broadband market and leading regions with NGSO (without geostationary) actively focus on retail and business users, including urban and studies.
Operators also raised the problem of costs on the initial spectrum committed by telecommunications operators standing on £1,93 trillion for Jio, £1.88 trillion for Airtel and £1,64 trillion for the idea of Vodafone. Unlike telecommunications operators, there are no fees for spectrum fees and inputs recommended by Trai for satellite Internet companies.
“On the other hand, earth operators are obliged to pay considerable fees for auction, often in the amount of thousands of CROR-transparent to the effective spectrum costs of 18% to 53% of the current AGR. £500 on subscribers annually in urban areas of the recommended trai will not deal with a significant regulatory imbalance resulting from the absence of initial fees, ”Kochhar said in a letter.
For targeted subscribers in unsuitable or insufficiently operated regions in rural and remote areas, the regulatory body recommended that the government consider a subsidy for each fixed user terminal in a suitable amount. TRAI said that the government may decide that the government may provide a subsidy either through direct benefits (DBT) to eligible subscribers or operators through the Bharat Nidhi (DBN) digital fund.
According to Trai, one -off cost of hardware for the user terminal is scattered between £20,000 and £50,000.
“Another proposal for subsidizing user terminals or satellite operators through the DBN Fund also loads straight conditions against the Earth’s operator, especially because most of the DBN retaliation contributes to competing operators,” Kochhar said.
Telecommunications operators contribute 5% of their AGR to the DBN Fund to connect the insufficiently operated area and overcome the digital abyss.
According to telecommunications operators, the recommendations of Trai strongly rely on the aim to bridge the digital gap as a justification for the recommendations of the very nominal price of the spectrum for communication services based on satellite. “Although Trai relies on this aspect, it does not recommend any compulsory obligations of minimal connections in rural areas before providing services in urban areas,” Kochhar said.
“Therefore, the use of a digital distribution is only to support the framework for the Ultra Low Spectrum prices at the cost of the National Treasurer instead of benefiting only exposed rural and remote areas,” he said, adding that the justification should be fairly applied across all communication services providers.
In a letter of telecommunications operators, they urged the government to create a committee to make a comprehensive review of recommendations in its entirety and ensure that the process is led by the principles of justice, transparency and justice. The same should also be given to telecommunications operators to share their opinions on the same thing, Coai said in a letter.
According to telecommunications operators, today’s higher costs at the user terminal terminal justify the prices of lower spectrum.
In India, more than 85% of households lack broadband access to a fixed line. “This large unused market offers satellite operators a significant potential for scale, which will reduce the cost of equipment,” Kochhar said in a letter.
For attracting users, satellite providers already aggressively reduce terminal prices. For example, on American and other markets, providers such as Starlink now offer zero equipment according to 12 months of obligations, telecommunications operators said.
(Tagstotranslate) Earth’s Internet operators (T) Telecom regulator
