Vodafone Essar expressed strong disappointment over TRAI’s new policy guidelines pertaining to allocation and pricing of 2G spectrum.

“As a major player in the India communications market, having invested heavily to drive the industry and Indian economic development, Vodafone Essar (VEL) is extremely disappointed with the TRAI Recommendations on spectrum, licensing and M&A.  We believe that they are retrograde for the industry and against the interest of consumers,” said the company.

 It stated that the recommendations deviated fundamentally from the holistic, forward looking spectrum reform framework recommended by the Expert Committee set up by DoT that TRAI was tasked with considering.

 “While the DoT Expert Committee recommended a forward looking and coherent set of proposals, the TRAI recommendations have cherry-picked dozens of incompatible elements and resulted in a set of proposals which are opaque, illogical and discriminatory,’ added the company.

“Most seriously, the recommendations would punish the companies that have invested early and taken the initiative to extend telecom services to all sections of the society. By seeking to put tremendous additional financial burden on the pioneer companies, in the form of arbitrary one-time charge on a portion of the old 2G spectrum but linked to ongoing 3G spectrum prices, the recommendations would place a critical industry in jeopardy, and seriously undermine the goal of extending telecom and internet services to the poorest across the country. The TRAI Recommendations are simply unworkable,” said Vodafone Essar.