India concerned over cross-border telecom signals from Pak

It is not only terrorism from Pakistan that is hurting India. Even cross-border telecom signals are causing problems here, prompting moves for taking up this issue with Pakistani establishment for its redressal.

Signals of Pakistani telecom providers are crossing into Indian territory in Punjab, leading to interference with Indian services.

Concerned over this, India is planning to seek a meeting with Pakistan to resolve the issue, sources said, adding that the department of telecom and ministry of external affairs are holding consultations in this regard.

There are plans to seek a meeting between the departments of telecom of the two countries in June but nothing has been
finalised as the process of consultations are still going on, they said.

Earlier, the Pakistani mobile phone companies had also complained to authorities that interference in frequency bandwidth from Indian cellular operators, Tata Mobile and Reliance Communications, was affecting the quality of their services.

The areas of Lahore, Sialkot, Kasur, Sahiwal, Bahawalnagar and Bahawalpur, which border India, are being affected by the bandwidth interference, representatives of mobile phone companies said.

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and Frequency Allocation Board (FAB) carried out a joint survey following the complaints and said that the interference had caused a "calculable depreciation in quality of mobile telecommunication services in areas of Punjab province located near the border with India."

The interference happens as the Indian CDMA operators and the Pakistani operators usually operate on the very similar bandwidths.

While the Indian CDMA operators have been allocated 824-844 MHz/869-889 MHz band, some Pakistani operators work on 890-915Mhz/935-960Mhz band. So between 889Mhz and 890 Mhz there are some interference.

However, those can be reduced by using proper mechanisms.