Challenge for govt to meet SC timeline: Former DoT member

TRAI's recommendations do not address the main issues and it will be a challenge for the government to meet Supreme Court's auction deadline, says Chandra Prakash former member of Department of Telecom in an interview to CNBC-TV18.

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He also says "that the government will find it very challenging to resolve the issue in the timeline that Supreme Court has now revised. The government should quickly take another recommendation from TRAI and referring it back to them to concentrate on the current issue. It could be very simple to see how many slots are to be filled? What will be the criteria of location?  The reserve price has been kept very high."

On a question, will the government be in a position to reduce reserve price? Prakash says, the government needs to take a bold decision. They have kept only one slot for the new operator.

Keeping a slot only for one operator and that too, not fixed. If the operator does not set in position in the auction, the new operator, either the cancelled or the new ones will not get it. It will be taken away by the existing operators.

The issue was not about allocation of spectrum to the existing operators. It was only for the purpose of replacing the operators with one of these operators or with the new one for the new slots.