New Delhi: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has invited public views on calculation of spectrum charges for satellite-based services using systems installed in India under a special licence category.
This follows the Department of Telecom (DoT) seeking Trai’s recommendation on BSNL’s request to change the present method of levying spectrum charges on its satellite services as they are too expensive for subscribers.
“BSNL has been requesting to change the present methodology of spectrum charging from formula based to Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) based for provision…this consultation paper has been prepared to discuss the issues involved,” Trai said in a consultation paper floated Wednesday.
The satellite phone service of BSNL caters to government departments. The company was given licence under ‘sui generis’ category to meet the requirement of security forces on urgent basis. BSNL established the satellite gateway (or hub) in Ghaziabad and launched the Global Satellite Phone (GSP) Service in May 2017. The licence permits BSNL to provide all types of mobile satellite services.
According to the paper floated by Trai, BSNL had 3,448 satellite phone subscribers by the end of August 2018. As per the information provided by BSNL, average usage of a satellite phone user is about 15 minutes of voice calls and seven SMSes in a month.
The State-run firm is required to pay spectrum related charges as per the present norms that are linked to number of terminals and frequency of bandwidth used by them, at the rate of Rs 14,250 per annum per terminal.
In addition, annual spectrum charges for the gateway are levied separately, which amounts to Rs 37.81 lakh per annum. BSNL has submitted that due to heavy spectrum charges, the service is not affordable. The company has also informed the DoT that the client departments do not immediately place the orders and there is a gap of three-six months between BSNL procuring the handsets and the client getting the satphones.
“BSNL pays this fee on behalf of the users in advance at the time of issue of Letter of Intent. BSNL has already paid about Rs 11.4 crore towards the terminal based spectrum charges,” the paper said, citing BSNL communication to the DoT.
Out of the 8,000 satphone terminals imported by BSNL as of 31 August, only 1,973 terminals were actually being used by the subscribers. Trai has sought written comments on the consultation paper by 31 October and counter-comments by 8 November on the issues raised.
| Call connection time, mute on radar |
| Keeping its vigil on service quality, Trai has said that delay in ‘call set up time’ is a problem currently and it will seek related data from operators from 1 October to find a solution to the issue. Put simply, call set up time refers to time taken to connect a call after a subscriber finished dialling a number.
“There are 1-2 things which are posing difficulty which, I think, is a temporary problem. One is the ‘call set up time’ because of multiple technologies … we have decided to measure call set up time, and after measuring maybe we will know what are the average values, and those can probably be prescribed as a norm,” Trai Chairman, R S Sharma, said. Admitting that “call set up times” have “increased in general” and in some cases end up being as long as 30 seconds, Sharma said the regulator is seeking data related to this from operators from 1 October. |