The Department of Telecom is weighing the option of allowing incumbent operators to retain 5 Mhz of spectrum in the 900 Mhz band and re-farm the rest.
This will be a huge gain for incumbent players, including Bharti Airtel and Vodafone which currently own majority of spectrum in this band.
The TRAI had proposed to take away the entire frequency band from the incumbent players and put it up for auction to level the playing field. The 900 Mhz band is considered to be more efficient compared to frequency bands being used by other operators. The DoT is looking at allowing operators to retain some part of it.
The Department has floated a paper on this issue for the consideration of the Telecom Commission with three options. The first option is to accept the TRAI proposal. The second option is to allow operators to keep 2.5 Mhz and the third is to permit them to retain 5 Mhz.