Telecommunications

November 16, 2006
AUSPI sees a bright future for CDMA

Runa Mukherjee

NEW DELHI -- Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers (AUSPI), while underlining the emergence of India as a key driver of CDMA growth, said the expansion of this technology will see an estimated Rs 53,000 crore investment by December next year.

AUSPI, a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) supporter has already invested Rs 39,000 crore as on September 2006 on the expansion of the CDMA technology in India, and will invest Rs 53,000 crore by December 2007 to increase the number of CDMA subscribers from the current 37 million to 75 million subscribers.

The CDMA technology has always been at loggerheads with the popular GSM technology, even as we are seeing a huge growth in the CDMA subscriber base as while the GSM technology grew by 13 percent, the CDMA technology showed a 28 per cent growth according to TRAI.

The CDMA-based mobile operators' association also expressed concern over interconnection delays from BSNL and is working closely with the telecom PSU to resolve pending issues to get the interconnection faster.

"We hope that the spectrum policy will not be GSM-centric as has been in the past and we hope AUSPI and Cellular Operators Association of India are not found fighting over the spectrum issue, but are seen fighting it out in the market place," said AUSPI's newly elected vice president Ashok Sud.

AUSPI also announced its newly elected president B B Anand and vice president Ashok Sud, besides declaring world-renowned vendors and technology developers Qualcomm, Lucent Technologies, ZTE Telecom and Huawei Telecommunications as its Associate Members for the first time.

"We will be closely working with the government to fulfil our plans," AUSPI secretary general S C Khanna said.

AUSPI aims to achieve the national goal of 250 million phones by the end of next year, 500 million phones by 2010 and 600 million phones by the end of the 11th five year plan.

Tele-density, which has increased from 1 percent to 15 percent makes AUSPI confident as Khanna said, "We are fully supporting the government in its infrastructure-sharing scheme under the USO fund so that goals of rural tele-density are also met alongwith overall goals of further enhancing the tele-density in India. To bridge the urban-rural divide, the cost to serve has to be reduced."

The organisation has also taken up the issue of the reduction of the revenue share license fee to 6 percent, with the Ministries of Communications, IT and Finance.