Beyond The Auction Debate: How India’s Administrative Assignment Of Satellite Spectrum Gives Effect To The ITU’s Equitable Access Mandate
Sanat Nandkishore, National Law Institute University, Bhopal
Prathviraj Singh Sikarwar, National Law Institute University, Bhopal
ABSTRACT
India’s satellite broadband market stands at the threshold of commercial launch, and it does so on the strength of a framework that the Government has built with considerable care. The Telecommunications Act 2023 settles the mode of assignment by placing satellite-based services in the First Schedule, which removes them from the default rule of auction. The pricing exercise that followed has given that framework a simple, balanced and administrable charge, reflecting a consultative process between the executive and the regulator. This paper argues that the public debate on auction versus administrative assignment asks the wrong question, since the rights that matter in satellite communication are created at the International Telecommunication Union. Those rights arise through filing, coordination and recording rather than through any domestic sale, and the ITU Constitution requires them to be used rationally, efficiently and economically. The paper demonstrates that India’s choice of administrative assignment gives effect to that obligation in a manner consistent with the practice of the United States, Brazil and the European Union. It contends that the residual uncertainty surrounding the framework lies not in any legislative or executive choice but in the judicial treatment of spectrum after the 2G judgment. That judgment applied reasoning drawn from terrestrial spectrum to a resource that the Court did not examine, and the Supreme Court has not yet had occasion to revisit it. The paper concludes that the Telecommunications Act and the norms issued by IN-SPACe already equip the Government to carry its framework forward on the foundations it has laid. Deployment-linked assignment, a default framework for sharing between non-geostationary systems and a spectrum-linked charge would each build on choices the Government has already made.
Keywords: satellite spectrum, ITU Radio Regulations, Telecommunications Act 2023, non-geostationary constellations, equitable access, administrative assignment.
