The Army has dug its heels on releasing space from the frequency spectrum for mobile service providers, making it clear to the Prime Minister’s Office and the Defence Ministry that it will do so only after it is handed over a dedicated secure network else the communication security of the strategic weapons system stands to be compromised.

The issue has snowballed into a major controversy as opening up 45 MHz of the spectrum, currently with the Defence, is crucial to achieving the government target of increasing mobile subscriber base from 122 million to 250 million by 2007-end. Also, this space is needed to launch third generation mobile services in the country.

While the Army and Navy have joined hands on this, the Air Force has accepted an offer from the Department of Telecom of an exclusive bandwidth within the existing optical fibre network in the country. This, however, does not work for the Army which has an elaborate countrywide ground-based communication infrastructure in place.

A joint trial conducted by the Army and BSNL showed that this network cannot be integrated with the bandwidth being offered from the current optical fibre network by the DoT. The Air Force, on the other hand, is prepared to separately change its existing systems as they were already in need of an upgrade.

As for the Army, it has demanded a brand new dedicated secure “core optical fibre network” that is compatible with its existing systems. This core network will connect 219 military stations across the country as this critical to its command and control systems as well as the highly secure communication network needed for strategic weapons. It’s learnt that National Security Advisor M K Narayanan too has been briefed about the strategic implications.

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