India's mobile operators have climbed down from their demand that the government should provide them additional radio spectrum to deal with the increase in internet usage post the lockdown. Telcos now say there is no need for additional spectrum as they have "seen a flattening of traffic demand" on networks.
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Ever since the COVID-19 lockdown led to work-from-home (WFH), video conferencing as well as reports of general populace wiling away time by surfing and catching entertainment online, fears had risen over possible crash of networks, even the entire internet, with overuse and the networks' inability to bear the load. This had led to India's telcos pleading to the Dept of Telecommunication (DoT) to grant additional spectrum to manage the increased traffic.
However, the government had remained cold to the Telcos request. While the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) claimed that mobile internet usage had gone up 10 to 20 per cent, govt officials claimed their information showed only a 3 per cent spike at best.
"We believe there is no such present need and operators remain confident the steps they have taken presently can maintain the relatability and quality of their networks and services," said Rajan S. Mathews, director-general of COAI. The organisation claimed bandwidth usage had 'flattened' because of measures adopted by the industry in co-ordination with DoT. This includes OTT streaming services reducing their transmission quality from high definition (HD) to standard definition (SD), municipalities helping telcos in unsealing mobile towers and helping them get operational as well as redistribution of traffic on the network, whereby different operators came together to share traffic.
