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The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is auctioning 10,500 megahertz of mobile service radio waves in eight bands to telecom players on Tuesday.
Ministry of Communications announced that the frequencies on auction across the spectrum include 800 megahertz (MHz), 900 MHz, 1,800 MHz, 2,100 MHz, 2,300 MHz, 2,500 MHz, 3,300 MHz, and the 26 gigahertz (GHz) bands.
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Total quantum of spectrum being auctioned is 10,522.35 MHz in various bands valuing Rs 96,238.45 crore at reserve prices.
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The auction will see participation from three bidders including Bharti Airtel Limited, Vodafone Idea Ltd, and Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd.
“This is in line with the government’s commitment to facilitate affordable, state-of-art high quality telecom services to all the citizens,” the ministry said.
The Communication Ministry in a statement said ”the auction shall be a Simultaneous Multiple Round Ascending (SMRA) e-auction, assigned for a period of 20 years.”
Successful bidders will be allowed to make payment in 20 equal annual instalments, duly protecting the NPV at the interest rate of 8.65 per cent.
Spectrum acquired through this auction can be surrendered after a minimum period of ten years, and there will be no Spectrum Usage Charges (SUC) for Spectrum acquired in this auction.
It is not required by the successful bidder to submit a Financial Bank Guarantee (FBG) and Performance Bank Guarantee (PBG).
Notably, the DoT initiated the Spectrum Auction and Notice Inviting Applications (NIA) was issued on 8 March, 2024.
Mock Auctions were conducted on June 3, June 13 and June 14 to familiarise the bidders with the e-Auction platform.
Subsequently, Auction Catalogue was published on June 24 at 9 am to ensure there is no inaccuracy in the data of bidders. The Live Auction started at 10 AM on June 24.
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