New Delhi, Oct. 24: Telecom players fear that the government’s move to increase subscriber requirement for extra spectrum will delay their expansion plans.

GSM operators such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and Spice have been lobbying for extra spectrum to offer better services.

Bharti Airtel has 8MHz or less of spectrum in 20 of its 22 circles. In 12 of the circles, it needs to add 1.5-3 million subscribers per circle to fulfil requirements for 8MHz of spectrum. In eight of the circles, including Calcutta, it needs to add 2-5 million subscribers, to meet the criterion for 10MHz of spectrum.

This may take years, especially with Reliance and other new players taking away market share.

In the Delhi circle, however, Bharti has 3.5 million subscribers that makes it eligible for 12.4 MHz of spectrum.

The situation is worse for Vodafone, which has 8MHz or less spectrum in 13 of its 16 circles. In 9 circles it has 6.2MHz or less spectrum.

The company fears there will be no spectrum by the time it approaches the new benchmarks.

In Delhi, Vodafone will have to add one lakh subscribers to get 12.4Mhz spectrum. The company may be able fulfil this target before the defence authorities release 20Mhz spectrum.

Idea Cellular has less than 8MHz in nine of its 11 circles. Reliance Communication’s entry has pushed its nine applications down the priority order, though these were submitted over 18 months ago.

Spice is facing not only a delay in allocation for the Punjab and Karnataka circles but also its applications for spectrum in all its 20 circles have been pushed down the order with the entry of Reliance.

On October 19, the department of telecom (DoT) had made subscriber requirements for extra spectrum more stringent, by two to four times the current levels.

It also said it would continue with the present norm of providing spectrum to new telecom licence holders, thereby assigning a lower priority to the demands of existing players.

T.V. Ramachandran, director-general, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), had earlier said the “enhanced subscriber linkage criteria are based on assumptions that are incorrect, technically flawed and impossible to achieve and need to be revised.”

Analysts said existing operators would not have faced any problems if they had not opposed the allocation of spectrum through auctions.

If there were auctions, the existing players would have emerged winners. According to telecom analyst, Mahesh Uppal, “Companies like Bharti and Vodafone underestimated the inherent advantage they possessed in winning any auction for spectrum.”

Existing operators have an advantage in getting spectrum through auctions, given the strength of their balancesheets, infrastructure on the ground and past track record in winning bids in India and abroad, the analysts said.

With intense lobbying by existing operators, a legal battle seems imminent that will further delay the process of spectrum allocation.