An automatic hike in its spectrum holding quota following a DoT auction in the current year will rule out the need for surrendering any excess spectrum by Bharti Airtel in the Mumbai circle even as its excess spectrum holding has currently overshot by about 1 Mhz.
“There will be no need to surrender the excess spectrum as the auction is bound to increase the spectrum holding limit of the company which will even out the extra airwaves,” sources in Bharti Airtel told The Pioneer.
As per DoT, a telecom operator cannot hold more than 25 per cent of total spectrum assigned to all companies in a circle and over 50 per cent of total spectrum assigned in a particular frequency band. And a company has to surrender the excess quantity back to the Government within one year of the time since the holding goes beyond the permissible limit.
The company has already been allocated 9.2 Mhz spectrum in 1800 Mhz, in the 2G spectrum band. later it acquired additional 6 Mhz in 1800 Mhz band and 5 Mhz in 900 Mhz band in February. later its acquisition of WBSPl had led to an accumulation of a chunk of 20 Mhz of broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum in its total holding. In 2010, Qualcomm founded WBSPl had won a block of 20 megahertz of BWA spectrum, that can be used for 4G service across 4 telecom circles. This had led to the company overshooting its spectrum holding limit by 1 Mhz as of now. With this, reportedly, the company was required to surrender the excess spectrum without any compensation or adjustments.
However, on the other side, industry sources said that the acquisition of more spectrum could further add to the excess airwaves and thus would have to surrendered or sold off. This will yet to watched as this could grow more with new bids with more auctions expected from the DoT later this year. But then sources say this is unlikely to happen as the holding limit is also expected to be hiked in circles following a fresh auction.
Many metro circles are expected to complete their spectrum holding period by the end of this year even as there has been no formal schedule announced by the DoT. Following which major telcos are expected to re-bid for their circles or renew their holding licences for their current circles. As per sources the formal spectrum auction by the DoT is expected to take place by February next year.