The government on Monday said it will auction spectrum in 700Mhz band,
which is used for offering high-speed Internet services through fourth
generation technologies, in 2014.
"We are going to auction the 700
band in any case by 2014," Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said during the
commissioning of country's first lab for measuring specific absorption
rate (SAR) for mobile handsets.
The 700Mhz spectrum band ranges
from 698Mhz to 806Mhz and has been identified by the International
Telecommunication Union for telecom services.
"We have set up a lab in the country so that mobile phones can be tested here for electromagnetic radiations,"Sibal said.
He added more such labs will be set up across the country starting with Mumbai.
The
Telecommunication Engineering Centre SAR lab, which has been
commissioned at a cost of Rs. 2.5 crore, is the first lab in the country
for independent audit of SAR value, self-certified by mobile handset
manufacturers and importers in India.
The lab is capable of making
SAR measurement for CDMA, GSM 2G and 3G mobile handsets in the
frequency band of 800MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz and 2100MHz.
The lab is
also capable of making measurement of SAR value against the
International Commission on non-Ionising Radio Protection (ICNIRP) limit
of 2 Watt per kg measured over 10 gram of tissue as well as the
recently adopted 1.6 watt per kg measured over 1 gm of tissue.
Sibal
also commissioned a Next Generation Network (NGN) lab in TEC, which
serves the objectives of testing and certification as well as network
related study for any Internet Protocol (IP) based equipment.