CDMA lobby The Association of Unified Service Providers of India (AUSPI) hit back at incumbent GSM operators over the issue of excess spectrum as alleged by it.

Refuting claim by the incumbents that they are facing capacity crunch on the spectrum front, AUSPI says that areas where incumbents claim to be facing spectrum crunch namely urban areas and metro circles, the fact and figures show that incumbents have their respective network minutes flat or even on a declining trend.

AUSPI cites the multi-SIM trend and entry of new players whereby subscribers churn from incumbent networks as reasons for the decline in network minutes. Furthermore entry of 3G services will again result in reduced demand for 2G GSM spectrum says AUSPI.

AUSPI questioned a incumbent operator’s claim that if spectrum is capped to contractually agreed threshold limit of 2 x 6.2 MHz then it will have to make an additional capex of 15,000 towers. AUSPI argues that this results in savings of almost Rs 2 billion for the operator suggesting that it is operator’s gain at government’s expense.

According to AUSPI incumbents already have a capex advantage as they are allotted spectrum in the 900 MHz as compared to spectrum in the 1800 MHz band to others.

The industry body also questioned as to why the incumbents were aggressively marketing their services if they are facing spectrum crunch.