Thaindian News

New Delhi, April 20 (IANS) India Tuesday completed 52 rounds of an auction to award radio frequency spectrum for third generation telecom services in the country, with the government expected to get Rs.25,769.82 crore as minimum revenue from the bidding.
At the end of the ninth day of the auction, which began April 9, the provisional winning price for a pan-India licence stood at Rs.6,354.23 crore, up 81.5 percent from Rs.3,500 crore reserve price fixed by the government.

Delhi continued to attract the highest bid at Rs.733.71 crore, followed by Mumbai receiving a price of Rs.667.77 crore, Tamil Nadu Rs.643.37 crore and Maharashtra Rs.624.75 crore, according to latest data available on the website of the department of telecommunications.

Four states - Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Assam and Jammu and Kashmir- could not attract even a single player.

The 3G services will facilitate much faster connectivity than what is available now and enable applications such as Internet TV, video-on-demand, audio-video calls and high-speed data exchange.

Slots for three to four players are available in each of the 22 circles into which the country has been geographically divided for these services.

The government has already given Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) spectrum for 3G services on the condition that they will pay the same licence fee as would be levied on private players after the auction.

Along with the fee that will be eventually paid by the two state-run enterprises for the licences, the government will provisionally get Rs.25,769.82 crore from the auction, which is about 85 percent of the projected earning of Rs.30,000 crore from the 3G auction.

This is on the presumption that every available slot gets filled at the provisionally approved price.

Communications Minister A. Raja Monday said he expects the revenue earned to be over Rs.35,000 crore.

Nine telecom companies - Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Vodafone Essar, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices, Aircel, Etisalat, S Tel and Videocon Telecommunications - are participating in the online auction process.

It is a simultaneous auction for 22 circles over a secure website. At each round, the price is hiked from between 10-1 percent based on demand.

The auction is being held from 9 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. on all days, except Sundays and national holidays. The process will end only when the demand is equal to the number of slots available in each circle.

The bid data, including the winning companies’ names, will be made public after the auction’s completion and approval by the government. The winning firms will have to deposit the money within 10 days after the auction.

The successful bidders would be allowed to offer 3G services on a commercial basis from Sep 1.