Commercial deployment of Internet (or any other services) using TV white spaces in the 470-698MHz spectrum band will not be allowed through de-licensing to any player, except for research purposes, according to DoT, reports The Hindu. The direction comes a month after telecom lobby body COAI asked the DoT to limit allocation of white spaces to licensed players only. Creating an entry for specific players through the use of de-licensed white spaces will create distortion in the market and cause “considerable amount of loss to the exchequer, COAI said in a letter to DoT. However, DoT clarified that unutilized white spaces will soon be auctioned for licensed players once the Centre decides on pricing, and after its sure that the ecosystem is developed for this band. “It is clarified that the frequency authorisations are not for regular/commercial use of TVWS in India. It may be further noted that the frequency allocation for TVWS experiment has not been made with any reference to any particular technology,” said DoT in reply to COAI. Setback for Microsoft and Google projects The direction from DoT comes as a blow to Microsoft and Google who have been piloting use of white spaces for providing internet connectivity in rural reaches. In July last year, Microsoft India got approval by the IT ministry to conduct research on utilizing white spaces for providing internet in rural areas. By November 2015, Microsoft’s pilot was successfully being tested in Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh and it planned to extend the pilot in Varanasi…
Please subscribe to MediaNama. Don't share prints and PDFs.
You May Also Like
News
Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...
Advert
135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...
News
By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...
News
Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...