BackCheapen airwaves
When aviation took off, governments did not think of charging airlines for their use of high-traffic air corridors. Spectrum is also a scarce natural resource, one needed even by the poor. It should be cheap, if not free
PremiumThe cabinet on Wednesday gave India’s next round of 4G spectrum auctions a go-ahead. In March, airwaves totalling 2,251 megahertz will go under the hammer with a combined reserve price of a staggering ₹3.92 trillion. Evidently, the Centre expects telecom firms bidding huge sums to either renew soon-to-expire spectrum for their regular services or get more of it to expand network coverage. It’s not impossible.
Yet, there’s a case to be made for the government to quit treating spectrum as a lucrative revenue source and as a low-cost public resource instead. In a market that has seen major players like Vodafone-Idea and Bharti Airtel gasp for financial breath, operating costs need to descend. This is not only so that competition can thrive; wireless networks serve as a substratum for value generation in an economy fast going online, and high charges could dampen its growth and competitiveness. It’s an accident of convention that airwaves are charged for. When aviation took off, governments did not think of charging airlines for their use of high-traffic air corridors. Spectrum is also a scarce natural resource, one needed even by the poor. It should be cheap, if not free.
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