The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) today strongly supported DoT’s proposal to have separate revenues for 2G and 3G services for licence fee renewal purpose. The association cited few instances to lay emphasis on its claims.

COAI’s Director General, T V Ramachandran said that segregation of 2G and 3G services is simple and easy.

Among the many instances cited in its statement, COAI draws attention to the fact that the erectly announced dual technology clause allowed operators to segregate revenues for CDMA and GSM revenues separately. Ramachandran said that revenues for 3G services which are also run on WCDMA can similarly be differentiated.

He also gave the example of UK where segregation of 2G and 3G services is practised. While Hong Kong too followed segregation model it is not preferable due to the complexity involved said COAI.

COAI said that the revenue break-up can be implemented in two simple ways as reference i.e. either by the traffic based approach or call data record (CDR) approach.

He also said that the 3G auctioning process would ensure a fair determination of the market price for the spectrum and the renewal of licence requires only the administrative charges to fixed.

COAI blamed that the whole issue was projected as a manipulative move by certain vested interests and said that revenue break-up would push operators to enhance their 3G footprint and bring in more competitive atmosphere which will collectively result in benefit to end-user.