That's why the spectrum gets divided into bands by the government. Think of the spectrum as a whole as the wide open ground, and think of bands as roads that are put up on it to help guide traffic in a regulated fashion. This is necessary - to stretch the metaphor - because otherwise traffic from one source say, the home Wi-Fi connection could get in the way of traffic from your phone, resulting in a crash that stops everything from working.
Telecom spectrum starts from MHz, and goes up to MHz. Beyond that, we start getting into the unlicensed bands used for technology such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth - Wi-Fi used to be 2. According to the GSM Alliance, the most suitable spectrum for telecommunication is in the MHz to 4GHz range , and these bands are used globally for various telecommunications purposes.
Each country regulates the use of spectrum in its own territory but by and large the same technology finds use around the world, which is how you have roaming services. Circles Just as you have different countries managing spectrum in their geographies, you also have different telecom circles. This was a way for the government to manage the spectrum effectively across the country, and as a result, India was divided into 23 circles in ; later, in , Chennai was merged with Tamil Nadu leaving 22 circles in all.
When the policy first came about, telecom spectrum was linked to an operator's license - companies would be granted their license and they would also be allocated frequencies for a fixed number of years, after which they would have to bid to renew their license. New norms in delinked the spectrum from the license, so now when telecom operators ask to renew their licenses, they pay separately for frequencies.
So a telco would have to bid for a spectrum license in all of these circles to offer uninterrupted access across India - otherwise, it would have to connect with another company to offer the services in areas where it lacks spectrum, leading to roaming charges.
In those circles, it needs to switch users to a different band to offer its services. Of course this happens without any user intervention, so as long as Airtel has any spectrum and a license in the circle, users are unlikely to notice the difference. The oldest of these is obviously 2G, while 4G is still evolving. These technologies were developed to take advantage of different bands, and this means that you can't just use a technology on any band at will.
Bands might be roads, but only specific types of vehicles can travel on them. That's why your phone needs a modem that can operate on multiple frequencies, so that it can connect to all the bands, and transmit your voice, messages, and data.
Initially, LTE required a higher frequency for the greater data speeds it offered, but technology advances made it possible to use MHz instead. This holds validity for any kind of spectrum like the telecom spectrum. Lower frequencies are likely to use lesser power, travel far, not get affected by disturbances, and provide better coverage inside buildings.
This means that one would likely operate at the lowest frequency that can carry signals necessary for his applications. Just like natural resources are divided for their fair use, the spectrum is also required to be auctioned by the government. The government auctions it to those companies that can use it to offer several services and recoup their investments.
The first spectrum auction in India was conducted for MHz band, in Later, the government switched to an administrative allocation model, where it would select the companies best suited for developing India's telecom infrastructure.
However, the result of this was that the spectrum was being licensed at far lower rates than what was raised by auction. Then came the 2G spectrum scam and the Supreme Court asked the government to cancel all those licenses that were citing irregularities. Did you know there is a missing supermassive black hole? Are you worried or stressed? Click here for Expert Advice. Comment 0. Post Comment. Disclaimer: Comments will be moderated by Jagranjosh editorial team.
Comments that are abusive, personal, incendiary or irrelevant will not be published. These signals are carried on airwaves, which must be sent at designated frequencies to avoid any kind of interference. The Union government owns all the publicly available assets within the geographical boundaries of the country, which also include airwaves. With the expansion in the number of cellphone, wireline telephone and internet users, the need to provide more space for the signals arises from time to time.
To sell these assets to companies willing to set up the required infrastructure to transport these waves from one end to another, the central government through the DoT auctions these airwaves from time to time. These airwaves are called spectrum, which is subdivided into bands which have varying frequencies. All these airwaves are sold for a certain period of time, after which their validity lapses, which is generally set at 20 years.
The last spectrum auctions were held in , when the government offered 2, Although the government managed to sell only MHz — or about 40 per cent of the spectrum that was put up for sale — and the total value of bids received was just Rs 65, crore, the need for a new spectrum auction has arisen because the validity of the airwaves bought by companies is set to expire in In the spectrum auctions scheduled to begin on March 1, the government plans to sell spectrum for 4G in the , , , 1,, 2,, 2,, and 2, MHz frequency bands.
The reserve price of all these bands together has been fixed at Rs 3. Depending on the demand from various companies, the price of the airwaves may go higher, but cannot go below the reserve price. All three private telecom players, Reliance Jio Infocomm, Bharti Airtel, and Vi are eligible contenders to buy additional spectrum to support the number of users on their network.
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