Trai issues spectrum sharing paper

NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has sought public consultation on whether the incremental spectrum usage charge (SUC), in case of spectrum sharing, must be applicable only to shared bands. On Wednesday, it released a paper titled ‘Methodology of applying SUC under weighted average method of SUC assessment, in cases of spectrum sharing’ to arrive at a method for calculating fee on shared spectrum.

An additional 0.5% of revenue is levied on access service providers as SUC when the two share a band. However, the telecom department has received requests that additional fee be charged only on the shared band and not the entire band held by licensees. The last dates to submit comments and counter comments on the paper are May 20 and June 3, respectively.