The government has allocated Rs 150 crore to Department of Telecom this fiscal for providing optical fibre cable (OFC) network to defence services, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Thursday.
“The Planning Commission has allocated Rs 150 crore for 2007-08 to DoT for providing OFC network to country’s defence services and to enable them to vacate 45 MHz of spectrum for telecom services,” Minister of State for Planning M V Rajasekharan said in a written reply.
In a related query, Minister of State for Communications Shakeel Ahmad said the assessment of spectrum requirements to achieve national targets of mobile phones has been made and discussions with concerned wireless users, including defence, have been held for release of the required spectrum.
He said alternate media like OFC network for existing usage has been planned appropriately.
Ahmad was responding to a question whether DoT requires 42.5 MHz spectrum for mobile services and defence services would be affected by giving additional spectrum to telecom operators.