Satellite spectrum: Tech firms united, telcos divided on allocation
Tech firms like Elon Musk’s Starlink, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, Telesat, Tata Group’s Nelco, Hughes and Bharti Enterprises OneWeb have taken a united stand and told the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) that spectrum for satellite communication services should not be auctioned. In contrast, telecom operators are divided with Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea pressing for auctions and Bharti Airtel arguing against it.
Trai is carrying out a consultative process on the matter and all stakeholders have responded to the discussion paper on the subject. The Authority will now hold public consultations before finalising its recommendations.
“Trai’s choice of spectrum assignment process must recognise that when it comes to shared spectrum use by satellites, the triple benefits of increased competition through numerous operators, maximisation of consumer choice, and revenue optimisation are all fundamentally aligned,” Starlink said in its comments on the consultation paper.
“Auctioning spectrum used for satellite services in the higher frequency bands would block other potential users and artificially limit competition to only a few players. Auctions can also result in higher prices for customers, as winning bidders pass through their spectrum acquisition on costs,” said Amazon’s Kuiper.
Countering such views, Jio and Vodafone have said that there should be same rules for assignment of spectrum for satellite and terrestrial networks as they compete with each other. “It can be established from various reports that services providers such as SpaceX, OneWeb, Kuiper, Telesat have an intent to create broadband communication services which would compete with terrestrial broadband services,” Jio said, adding that their explicit intention is to instigate competition with terrestrial networks and no preferential treatment should be given to them.
On the argument that satellite spectrum is used in a shared manner, Jio said due to the widespread geographic distribution of user terminals, it would be unfeasible for terminals deployed by different service providers to operate on the same frequency. The satellite spectrum in the band of 27.5-28.5 GHz is key for offering internet services in the far-flung areas.
Vodafone Idea said, “28 GHz band has already been assigned for IMT/5G in many countries including Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and US, and the same should also be made available in India for 5G/IMT to enable mobile operators to acquire adequate quantity of spectrum, to support present and future needs of variety of use cases.”
Four countries — Brazil, Mexico, the US and Saudi Arabia — had come up with competitive spectrum allocation for space communications. But Brazil, Mexico and the US later discontinued the auction system due to impracticality.
Bharti Airtel, which is part of Bharti Enterprises, the promoter of OneWeb, said, “The auction of orbital slots done in a few countries should not be confused with the auction of spectrum for satellite services.”
According to Airtel, in an auction-based scenario, competitive forces can block spectrum capacity and hoard it. This will lead to non-utilisation in areas where another operator (who has a global assignment for the same spectrum) could have used it.
On Jio and VIL’s argument of same rules, the Broadband India Forum (BIF) said the current annual revenue of Indian mobile operators is about `2.5 trillion whereas that of the Indian satellite VSAT operators is only around `500 crore.
“Satellite services are therefore as miniscule as 1/500th or a mere 0.2% of the mobile operators’ revenue. It would be a travesty of justice to equate the two in treatment of mode of allocation of spectrum resource,” BIF added.
Satellite companies also rejected the argument that the Supreme Court’s 2012 order mandates auction, and said the 2G judgment was specific only to the allocation of spectrum from September 2007 to September 2008. It was in response to a Presidential reference and the court was not talking about auction in general.
Various industry bodies such as Indian Space Association (ISpA), Nasscom, Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology (MAIT), India Cellular and Electronics Association, among others, have called for administrative allocation of satellite spectrum to protect the nascent space industry from huge competition.