India’s 5G pricing reasonable: Telecom regulator

The base price for the fifth-generation or 5G airwaves is reasonable and below than those in other countries, a top Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) official reiterated.

“Trai’s 5G price is much below than many other countries and is very reasonable. If you don’t look at all things holistically, and merely say price is high in India on the basis of cost per unit, it is completely incorrect,” Trai secretary Sunil Kumar Gupta told ETT.

The regulator has recommended spectrum in the 3300-3600 MHz band range at Rs 492 crore per Megahertz (Mhz).

The telecom service providers have been arguing that the reserve price per unit suggested by the sector regulator was high, and sought to review from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).

Bharti Airtel’s chairman Sunil Mittal in February this year said that the current 5G price was unacceptable and expressed the telco’s inability to bid if the government goes ahead without a relook.

Newly-merged entity Vodafone Idea too is expected to give a miss to the upcoming spectrum sale at the existing base prices during the current calendar year. On the contrary, billionaire Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio is likely to bid even at the current cost to gain a first-mover advantage over rivals.

However, despite a large section of the industry’s opposition, the sector regulator continues to stand firm and dispelled the pricing-related concerns.

“Fundamentally, when you (industry) say base prices are high, there has to be some basis of it,” the official added.

In the recent spectrum auctions in South Korea, Italy and Germany, according to Gupta, the terms and conditions, number of years for the license, coverage area and population were different than in India, and that couldn’t be equated.

Trai has suggested radio waves in the block of 20 MHz, and for a purchase of 100 Mhz of volume, a player would need to pay at least Rs 50,000 crore.

Given the industry dissent, the DoT has so far not notified the auction date.

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government wanted the commercial rollout of netx-generation of networks to happen by 2020, after successful field trails based on India-specific use cases.

Gupta said that 5G would be deployed in India as per the government plan.

“Government has created end-to-end testbeds to encourage the development of relevant applications and a lot of work has been done by IIT Chennai in the area of high-speed broadband for rural areas,” the official added.

The enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), according to him is at the radar of various service providers that would be rolled out soon and massive machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, used in various sectors could trigger industry 4.0 revolution.

For a successful 5G rollout, the level of fiberisation has to be increased, and that included the creation of FIBRE infrastructure and its sharing, according to him, and he added that the regulator was working on the matter and would soon come out with its findings.

State-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) that has the largest optic fibre footprint of nearly 8 lakh kilometers, is expected to lease out the dark network as a part of its strategy to boost income.

“Besides BSNL potentially earning nearly Rs 50,000 crore from the existing fibre network, private players can also utilise its assets to expand their footprint while reducing their capital spend at a time of sectoral stress,” Sandeep Aggarwal, co-chairman, Telecom Exports Promotion Council (Tepc) said.

Mumbai-based Jio has 3.25 lakh route kilometers of optic fibre cable while Bharti Airtel has 2.50 lakh kilometers of fibre footprint.

In the wake of 5G, the government aims to increase fibre footprint to fivefold by 2022, from the current 1.5 million route kilometers.