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indiantelevision.com Team
NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has extended till 6 January the written comments on its Consultation Paper on "Issues related to prescribing minimum Channel spacing, within a license service area, in FM Radio sector in India".
Stakeholders can also send counter comments by 13 January, a Trai press note said, adding that this had been done on the request of stakeholders. Earlier, the last dates for comments and counter comments were 26 December and 2 January respectively.
With A and A+ cities demanding more FM channel even after the announcement of the Phase III guidelines, Trai had sought the opinion of stakeholders whether it would be acceptable if the minimum channel spacing within a license service area can reduced from the current level of 800 KHz.
It had said that if it can be reduced, then stakeholders should suggest what the minimum level should be, justifying their answers with reasoning. Issues such as the viability and desirability of having more number of channels in the interest of the stakeholders, selectivity of FM receivers available with the consumers ( such as mobile handsets, car radios, and other receivers), transmission from a single or multiple transmission setups may please be factored in should also be considered.
The Consultation Paper asked stakeholders to consider the implications of reducing/not-reducing the minimum channel spacing within a license service area. Furthermore, should the reduction of minimum channel spacing be confined to A+ and A category cities or should it be reduced across the country, and how should funding for the modification of transmitting setups be funded.
The Paper says that a second solution suggested by the operators requires a separate common transmission infrastructure (CTI) which includes transmitting tower, combiners, feeder cable, transmitting antenna etc. Effectively there would be two CTIs, one existing and another new one.
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