The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) today amended Annexure F of NIA 2022 carrying the details of the carrier frequency put to auction. As a result of the amendment, certain spectrum blocks in specified areas won’t be available for assignment due to certain issues.
In the 600 MHz, 700 MHz, 800 MHz & 900 MHz spectrum bands, the spectrum blocks put to auction won’t be available for assignment in a region of a 30 km radius around the GMRT observatory in Maharashtra LSA. The exact details of the region where spectrum blocks in Maharashtra LSA are not available for the assignment will be provided to the qualified bidders separately.
Apart from this as earlier reported, certain spectrum blocks in the 600 MHz, 1800 MHz, 3300 MHz, and 26 GHz spectrum bands remain unavailable for assignment in specified area within certain LSAs.
In the 600 MHz spectrum band, the spectrum blocks put to auction in 4 LSAs namely Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, North East, and Uttar Pradesh (West) won’t be available for assignment in 50 km from the international border. The details of the area where spectrum blocks in the 4 LSAs are not available for the assignment will be provided to the qualified bidders separately.
In the 1800 MHz spectrum band, spectrum blocks 93 to 142 in Haryana LSA are available for assignment in the entire LSA except for Sirsa and Fatehabad districts.
In the 3300 MHz spectrum band, spectrum blocks 21 to 23 in 6 LSAs namely Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, North East, Rajasthan and West Bengal LSAs are not available for assignment to telecom services at 6 locations (one location in each of the 6 LSAs). The exact details of the polygon area where spectrum block 21 to 23 is not available for the assignment will be provided to the qualified bidders separately.
Also, spectrum blocks 24 to 33 in 6 LSAs namely Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Jammu & Kashmir, North East, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh (West) LSAs are not available for assignment in 50 km from the international border. The details of the area where spectrum blocks 24 to 33 are not available for the assignment will be provided to the qualified bidders separately.
In the 26 GHz spectrum band, spectrum 11 to 40 are not available for assignment to telecom services at 5 locations (one location in each of the 5 LSAs) within a 2.7 km radial area. The 5 LSAs are namely Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal LSAs. The exact longitudes and latitude of these 5 locations will be provided to the qualified bidders separately.
Lastly, in the 800 MHz spectrum band, if all the spectrum blocks put to auction are sold then the actual assigned bandwidth of one of the sold blocks shall be 0.75 MHz instead of 1.25 MHz. A field trial will be carried out to ascertain the inter-band guard requirement between 800 & 900 MHz bands.
The higher ranked bigger will be given the choice for the assignment of such block during the harmonization process provided the same doesn’t disturb the contiguity of spectrum held by other TSPs and the contiguity of the vacant spectrum in the band.
The charging of such block will be done on pro-rata basis. In case, the field trials show the guard band of about 1 MHz between 800 & 900 MHz band is enough for interference-free co-existence of assignees in the two spectrum bands, then the assignment of 0.75 MHz will be converted into a full bandwidth of 1.25 MHz and accordingly charged on pro-rata basis.
