The 2G spectrum spectre has refused to go away with the two high profile ministries - the Union Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Department of Telecom (DoT) under the Union Communications Ministry - at odds with each other over the control of the airwaves.
And the unseemly confrontation has both security and commercial implications. The MoD has refused to vacate the quantum of spectrum under its control to the DoT, which wants to put it to profitable use.
According to the MoD, unless all the three forces - the Army, the Air Force and the Navy - are allotted a separate communication network within the spectrum range, which had been promised in May 2009, the stalemate would continue.
An MoD official said that prior to the telecom revolution in the country, the Armed Forces were the biggest users of the spectrum band. However, they had vacated 20MHz in the 2G band and 20 MHz in the 3G band for commercial use following the DoT request that the country needed additional spectrum for the growth of the cellular services.
“The MoU inked on May 22, 2009 with the DoT clearly stated that in lieu of vacating the airwaves, an exclusive optical fibre network would be given to facilitate the migration of existing defence systems. The MoU also assured that all the three services would be given a defence band along with waiver of spectrum charges. The idea was to ensure that defence spectrum requirements remain confined to exclusive portions of the spectrum, thus facilitating the way for commercial wireless applications,” he said.
Following the assurances given by the DoT regarding the setting up of a dedicated defence spectrum, the Armed Forces vacated part of their bandwidth on August 31, 2010. It took the UPA Government two years to give the necessary clearance. However, on February 28, 2013 the day the process to execute the project was to be rolled out, the DoT unilaterally cancelled the tender for laying the optical fibre cables needed as part of creating the exclusive spectrum infrastructure for the Services.
The tender to lay 57,000 km of optical fibre cable was meant to create the backbone of a nationwide communication infrastructure for the Armed Forces in lieu of the 2G and 3G spectrums, which had been vacated.
“The entire project worth ` 13,334 crore was cleared by the Cabinet in August 2012 and it was to be completed within three years.
BSNL invited the first tender out of the total seven under the ‘Project Network for Spectrum’ on November 6, 2012. The last date of tender submission was February 27, 2013, but the DoT cancelled it on February 28. So far no reasons for such a serious decision have been formally conveyed to the MoD,” sources said.
Understandably, the DoT’s alleged “non-serious attitude”, has left the MoD deeply annoyed and the “defence forces have now expressed their inability to vacate any further spectrum until the promises made in the MoU are honoured by the DoT,” said a source.
Besides the delay in raising special infrastructure, there seems to be serious glitches in the communication network provided to the Services by the DoT through the BSNL bandwidth.
It is learnt that the IAF, which was planning to shift to a dedicated communications infrastructure is facing hurdles, as the BSNL network appeared to be unreliable for critical transmissions.
“The MoD has been engaging the DoT to resolve all these issues. There is also an urgent need to fast-track the separate network project, which if delayed further, may hit the commercial services as well,” sources added.