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.

The matter was to be taken up by the Group of Ministers on Spectrum Management headed by Defence Minister A K Antony and has Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia as its members besides Telecom Minister A Raja. The GoM was to meet for first time after two years on June 13, but this was cancelled at the last moment.

With the Air Force taking a different view, the DoT has a case study to show for good cooperation. The Army, in the meantime, has dug its heels. The problem is that what the Army is asking for would cost up to Rs 4,500 crore. This is way above DoT’s estimate of Rs 980 crore to cater for setting up an alternate communication network system for the Armed Forces in lieu of freeing up 45 MHz of spectrum.

On the other hand, the Army argues that the revenue generated from the freed-up space will more than enough to offset this cost.