Indian IT and communications minister A Raja is apparently fed up with the bitterness between different telecom constituencies, and has reportedly called for peace between the GSM and CDMA lobbies.
 After every decision taken by the Department of telecommunications (DoT), one organisation or the other has voiced its annoyance. The DoT has been subjected to a storm of criticism from all quarters over the past few months, especially over 3G licensing. Now, Raja has chipped in to try and ensure peace.
Raja is reportedly planning to hold meetings between the lobbies representing their respective players in CDMA and GSM technologies. He has asked the telecom secretary, Siddharth Behura, to convene a meeting of both parties for an amicable decision to sweeten their relationship.
The Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUSPI) and the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) are considered to be the respective camps of CDMA and GSM players, and are backed by major telcos.
There have been an endless number of legal tangles between these two camps over matters like dual technology and additional spectrum. COAI , which represents GSM players, has even been to the Delhi High Court appealing for it to rule on the dual technology matter and spectrum allocation given to CDMA players.
CDMA players have retaliated on several occasions. CDMA companies had demanded that GSM providers pay Rs 1.31 billion ($303 million) per megahertz for all radio frequencies they hold on excess of 4.4MHz. The CDMA lobby is mainly backed by two major CDMA players in India - Reliance Communications (RCom) and Tata Teleservices.
The problem may resolve itself in the future, as RCom has already entered the GSM sector in a big way and most telcos now have both CDMA and GSM services in their offerings. X
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