Telecom major Reliance Jio has questioned the Department of Telecom’s rationale to pause the policy of annual spectrum auction and demanded that the sale of airwaves should be held at the earliest to meet the demand for data services in the country.

  Mukesh Ambani-led Jio in a letter dated September 28 to TelecomSecretary Anshu Prakash said that the nation-building policies should not be kept hostage to the vested interest of few operators and delay in auction is hurting the national exchequer as well as making investors jittery as perceived against the principle of ease of doing business.

  The telecom major said that any delay in auction of unutilised spectrum will lead to serious issues around quality of mobile services in terms of call drops etc and also result in “revenue loss to the government.”

   “We are unable to find any reasonable rationale behind this sudden pause in a successful and fruitful policy of auctioning all available spectrum every year, since the Hon’ble Supreme Court decision in 2012,” Reliance Jio said in the letter.

The spectrum auctions were held every year after the apex court order in the 2G case in 2012 and the last was held in 2016.    “In order for sustainable and orderly growth of the sector, to meet the national objectives and for provision of quality broadband for all, allocating sufficient spectrum is imperative. Therefore, we reiterate that all available spectrum should be immediately auctioned,” the letter said.  The Digital Communications Commission, the apex decision making body of the Department of Telecom, in May approved the spectrum auction plan subject to Union cabinet approval.