A long-standing grouse of telecom executives in India has been that the regulatory environment changes every few years.
Indeed, ad hoc changes in policy have transformed the topography of the Indian telecom market more than once. Without these interventions, telcos would still be paying huge licence fees (to be fair, they had initially committed to paying these); telcos using the CDMA technology platform would not have been allowed to offer mobile telephony services (initially reserved for those using the rival GSM technology platform); and telcos wouldn’t have been allowed to offer mobile telephony services on both technology platforms.
Now, India’s telecom regulator has suggested far-reaching changes to how spectrum (radio waves) is allocated to telcos that, if accepted in their entirety by the telecom ministry,?will once again change the contours of competition and the market itself. India is in desperate need of a spectrum policy, but can do without one that changes the entire landscape.
