Broadcasting and telecommunications industries of India renewed calls for the Government of India to optimize the regulation of satellite services to provide greater choice for consumers while taking long-term and a considered approach to allocating existing satellite services bandwidth to terrestrial wireless services such as Wimax.
Indian and international industry organizations such as the VSAT Association of India (VSAI), the Global VSAT Forum (GVF), and the regionally-based cable & satellite broadcasting association of Asia (CASBAA) are concerned that a proposed spectrum grab for current satellite bandwidth in the 3.4GHz-3.7Ghz range used by Indian and international satellite operators and could close down satellite services including hundreds of TV channels across India.
The meeting covered numerous issues, including the need for expansion of Indian access on a long-term basis to competitively priced international satellite communications services. According to several speakers during the meeting, satellite services have underpinned India’s communications revolution, but they must be fairly, openly and efficiently allocated to operators on an even handed basis if the Indian people are to enjoy the greatest benefit. A capacity crunch has already developed that sees demand for satellite services vastly outstripping supply of transponders, and the proposed re-allocation of spectrum for WiMax services will turn a crunch into a crisis.
D.P. Vaidya, president of the New Delhi-based VSAI, said, "India remains woefully under-provisioned in many areas of satellite capacity and yet we have the potential to revolutionize the access to new and exciting interactive media and telecommunications."
Martin Jarrold, chief of international program development for the GVF, stated, "Broadcast channels supported by bandwidth-hungry broadband TV, and two-way broadband interactive telecommunications services, cannot be deployed unless there is a significant increase in access to in-orbit satellite inventory for Indian users."
Simon Twiston Davies, CEO of CASBAA, commented, "The largely unconsidered implications of the proposed changes could be catastrophic for news broadcasters which use the lower end of the C-band spectrum. This is exactly the radio spectrum now being given over to untried WiMAX services, which could easily use other frequencies."
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