The government of India recently stated that it is reviewing a deal made by the Indian Space Research Organization in 2005 that reportedly gave a private company free usage of S-band Radio bandwidth for 20 years. Such a use could mean the loss of $44 billion in revenue. Bandwidths are the differences between the lower and upper levels in sets of frequencies and is usable in many fields, including radio communications, and through electronic data transfer. The government has not yet reached a decision regarding whether to allocate bandwidth either to Antrix, the commercial arm of ISRO or Devas Multimedia Pvt. Ltd, the private company.
The original deal, according to a report in the Daily Line newspaper, was that the ISRO would launch two satellites for Devas against required payments and would also give the company free use of the agency's bandwidth. This report comes at a time in India when the majority party in Congress is facing a series of allegations regarding massive corruption. The government so far has made some "preliminary queries" and has stated that the space agency will reply to them. The Company Devas responded with its own statement, calling the report inaccurate and that it had received no communications from the Indian Space Agency. The company also said that it had approval to lease satellite transponders from the agency. India's Central Bureau of Investigation (the equilvalent of our FBI) is probbing the report. So far the Bureau has estimated that the government could lose up to 4.8 billion dollars in potential revenue. An arrest has been made last week in relation to the investigation. Former Telecom minister Andimuthu Raja and two aides were taken into custody by the Bureau for allegedly showing favortism in rewarding licenses of the use of bandwidth.
Original article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704364004576131721837728418.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Other sources:
http://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/definition/bandwidth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_(signal_processing)
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