Tata Teleservices to Give Up 800 MHz Spectrum in 15 Circles On June 10, Trai issued a direction to Tata Teleservices to surrender its spectrum which it is holding in the 800 MHz band. To recall, TTSL in its letter dated October 31, 2018, had agreed to surrender its administratively allocated spectrum which it held in various circles in the 800 MHz band. The telco had also informed the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) about the same in a letter dated October 22, 2018. With this announcement, TTSL will be giving up 3.75 MHz of administratively allocated spectrum in 800 MHz band in Delhi licensed service area and 2.50 MHz of administratively allocated spectrum in 800 MHz band in fifteen licensed service areas namely, Haryana, Gujarat, Kolkata, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh (West), Uttar Pradesh (East), Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar and Orissa. This implies that now TTSL won’t be able to continue providing CDMA services in the abovementioned circles. Back in December, Trai had asked the telecom operator to provide subscriber details like the number of prepaid and postpaid subscribers and subscriber wise information of unspent balance. After TTSL provided the authority with this information, the DoT accepted the surrender of the 800 MHz spectrum by TTSL. Tata Teleservices to Return Unspent Account Balance to Subscribers Trai in its direction has also said that since many subscribers must have been forced to port their SIMs to different telecom operators after TTSL’s early surrender of the spectrum, there might be some unspent balance in the subscribers’ accounts. After that, Trai directed that “TTSL should process refund of the unspent prepaid balance amount left in the form of recharge coupon or vouchers or plans of the mobile numbers ported out.” Along with this direction, Trai has also directed the telecom operator to make refunds for the security deposit of the postpaid subscribers of TTSL. Trai has also put in a clause in its direction, wherein if a subscriber has not ported his or her number to a different telecom operator then they can claim the refund of their unspent prepaid balance electronically to the bank account, by submitting the required details to Trai from various sources like the official Trai website.
