NEW DELHI: The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) on Friday said it has provisionally allocated spectrum to eligible satellite communication players for a period of six months.
The DoT, in a notification, said the spectrum will be given to firms that have secured licences from DoT as well as In-Space authorisation certificates. Currently, there are two companies -- OneWeb and Jio-SES -- that have received licences for satellite communication in the country. Elon Musk-led Starlink and Amazon have applied but yet to get approval from the government. DoT said the purpose of providing the provisional spectrum is to demonstrate all the compliances related to security and technical conditions by the licensee. The government said in a circular that the firms will be able to use these for trial purposes not for the commercial rollout.
“No claim can be made for regular use/ assignment of the provisional spectrum frequencies. Any regular spectrum assignment will be subject to the regulations/policies including authorization framework, spectrum pricing mechanism etc... prevalent at or after the time of expiry of the above security compliance period,” reads the notification. The government’s move comes amid a dispute between Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel. Jio is in favour of a satellite spectrum auction, while Bharti Airtel is in favour of direct allocation to satellite communication players.