Spectrum tug-of-war: Telecom vs tech in the 6 GHz battle

The government's refarming of 687 MHz spectrum boosts telecom capacity, but the auctioning of the 6 GHz band sparks concerns from the tech sector.

- BY VERNIKA AWAL

India's Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, recently approved refarming 687 megahertz (MHz) of telecommunications spectrum to add more airwave capacity to the telecommunications industry landscape. The move is largely designed to fill up the necessary capacity for additional spectrum, which the domestic telecommunications firms have been after for some time now. However, while additional spectrum needs were kosher, not every party was satisfied with the move.

While the telecommunications ministry deemed the move essential and the domestic telecom industry lauded it, the technology industry, led by industry body Broadband India Forum (BIF), deemed the auctioning of airwaves in the 6 gigahertz (GHz) spectrum detrimental to the health of the domestic technology ecosystem.

Announcing this at the DIGICOM Summit 2025 organised in New Delhi by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and Voice & Data, the Union Minister for Communications Jyotiraditya Scindia said, "We have approved refarming of 687 MHz (of the spectrum), which means that this takes us from 900 MHz (of spectrum available now) to 1,587 MHz. Of this, 320 MHz will be released immediately; some more will be released by the end of next year (2026), and the rest by the end of 2028-29-which makes us ready for 2030."

Even with this, though, Scindia said India may need more spectrum in the long run. "This still leaves us with a gap of roughly 300 MHz of spectrum. So, our ask is not over yet. In the second round of this (spectrum refarming exercise), a committee of secretaries will be working on it (planning the spectrum availability), the report of which will come by the middle of this year. We will take all steps to ensure that there are no bottlenecks for our digital telecom landscape to grow in India," the minister said.

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