Reliance Jio has once again urged the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to price the satellite spectrum at par with the price, which is paid by telecom operators in an auction mode.
The company has said that the value of the spectrum should be based on its full economic potential, whether assigned through auction or administratively, irrespective of the band.
“We submit that all spectrum used in a communication service has an economic value irrespective of the assignment methodology. If it is assigned through auction on an exclusive basis, it is translated to a price on a per MHz basis for each bidder,” Jio said in its additional comments to Trai on the satellite spectrum pricing.
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Trai is currently working to finalise its recommendations on the spectrum pricing.
“Conversely, if the spectrum is assigned jointly to multiple parties in a shared mode, this spectrum value does not get diminished to zero, nor does it justify assigning it at no cost (no upfront charge),” Jio added.
Jio’s stance is different from that of satcom operators such as Starlink, Kuiper, and Broadband India Forum, which have justified that satellite spectrum is a shared resource and therefore cannot be auctioned. Further, the satcom companies have urged Trai to keep the spectrum charge below 1% of their adjusted gross revenue (AGR) with no upfront cost so that affordable services be provided through satellite broadband.
Countering this view, Jio has maintained that these players want a backdoor entry, thereby denying the government and people their rightful dues for using spectrum.
“There was a lot of virtue signalling about capacities built or being built by a few mega constellations. It cannot be denied that the capacity building is for competing with terrestrial networks for each and every broadband customer in the market,” Jio said, adding that such companies (Starlink and Kuiper) cannot be allowed to pretend that they are doing a favour to Indian people by seeking an exemption from payment of spectrum price/value to the exchequer.
According to Jio, Starlink has around 75-80 satellites, as depicted in the live coverage map which can service Indian territory. This would form around 1.2% of the 6,560 satellites operating in the constellation.
The telecom operator said once the services are launched in India, the total satellite coverage being dedicated to India will increase to more than 2%. The same would result in significant capacities of 29.1 billion GBs of bandwidth capacities by Starlink and Kuiper, compared to 23 billion GB of the three private telecom operators combined, Jio told Trai.
Among key points, Jio has urged Trai to deliberate on the methodology of auction of such spectrum and issue a fresh consultation paper for the same to maintain transparency. It said Trai should critically examine the capacities created by these mega NGSO (non-geostationary orbit) constellations such as Starlink and Kuiper, wherein each satellite would be generating the capacities of around 200 Gbps to 1 Tbps.
According to the Broadband India Forum, the telecom operators are trying to block the entry of new players by pushing for vague arguments around hyper-competition, and valuation methodology for spectrum, which in a way will jack up the spectrum prices and bring it par with auction price.