What turned out to the biggest telecom spectrum auction of India as expected, has finally concluded after 19 days of heavy bidding, having fetched the sum of around a whopping Rs 1.10 lakh crore. Although a formal announcement is yet to be made, details have come to light unofficially.
It’s being said that the Indian Department of Telecom is planning to disclose details of the result as well as the names of successful bidders following the Supreme Court’s permission. This is owing to the fact that the high-profile 2G scam case is currently pending before the apex court.
The much awaited auction has been in the news a lot since the last few months. Rs 65000 crore was how much the government was expected to be richer by following this auction, but with the amount apparently having reached Rs 1.10 lakh crore, the exchequer sure has benefited a lot from the airwaves.
The latest auction featured spectrum under the custody of premier telecom operators in India. They include nine licenses of Idea Cellular, six of Bharti Airtel and seven each of Reliance Telecom and Vodafone that are all expiring in 2015-16.
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The fierce bidding that lasted for 19 days mostly revolved around the 900MHz and 1800MHz bands. Moreover, part of the 1800MHz band that remained unsold in 2014 was auctioned off as well, apart from frequencies in the 800MHz or CDMA band.
As revealed by a PTI report cited by HT, the prime participants of this auction were Idea Cellular, Airtel, Vodafone and Reliance Communications which had the aim of retaining their existing spectrum, while players like Reliance Jio, Tata Teleservices, Telewings (Uninor) and Aircel were there to buy additional airwaves.