Business

CAG seeks 4G roll-out status from DoT

PNS

The CAG has asked Telecom Department to provide the roll-out status of the broadband wireless access services by these entities.

The successful bidders were given five years time to roll-out the 4G services by July 2015.

"CAG last week wrote to DoT seeking roll-out status of network by the successful bidders - Aircel, Bharti Airtel, Qualcomm (acquired by Bharti), Tikona, Infotel (now Reliance Jio Infocomm) and Augere," an official source said.

As per auction conditions, all of them have to provide 90 per cent coverage in metro area, if they has spectrum there, and 50 per cent of rural area within five years. If a company fails to meet roll-out conditions, spectrum will be taken back.

These six companies won BWA spectrum, which can be used for 4G services, in 2010. The government had raised over Rs 35,000 crore through this auction.The BWA spectrum were allocated to all companies, except Qualcomm, in July 2010.