The auction for India’s wireless broadband spectrum has kicked off, with the winning bidders expected to fork out a combined total of Rs150bn (US$3.2bn) to secure their slots.
The Indian department of telecommunications (DoT) has authorised 11 companies…
The auction for India’s wireless broadband spectrum has kicked off, with the winning bidders expected to fork out a combined total of Rs150bn (US$3.2bn) to secure their slots.
The Indian department of telecommunications (DoT) has authorised 11 companies – two more than for the recently concluded US$14.4bn 3G auction – to bid for the two slots of broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum being auctioned in 22 regional circles.
As such the competition is hot and the first day of bidding has seen a number of excess bids drive up the price for pan-India spectrum by as much as 34.5% above the reserve price of Rs1750 crore to close to Rs2354.5 crore.
The 11 companies bidding for the rights to the BWA spectrum, which is primarily used for high speed data access and possibly also for voice services, are Tikona Digital, Qualcomm, Tata Communications, Vodafone Essar, Idea Cellular, Bharti Airtel, Aircel, Spice Communications, Augere, HFC Infotel and Reliance Communications.
MTNL has been reserved a slot for Delhi and Mumbai while BSNL is assured a slot for each of India’s other circles. Qualcomm and HFCL, the DoT has confirmed, are bidding for pan-India spectrum, while Augere, Tikona and Spice are only applying for certain regions.
As there are just two slots per circle, it is doubtful that any single player will receive pan-India spectrum, as in the 3G auction, but as India has only 1% broadband penetration there is significant interest from the industry.