With the third round of spectrum auction to take place in January 2014, the Department of Telecom (DoT) on Thursday said it would issue notice inviting applicants (NIA) within next 20 days for the sale of 2G spectrum. “In about 15-20 days time from now NIAs would be issued,” said MF Farooqui, Secretary DoT on the sideline of the India Telecom 2013 summit.
While talking about the quantum of spectrum auction, he said, “At the moment what we are going ahead with is 1800 Mega hertz (Mhz) and 900 Mhz, so about 400 Mhz totally in 1800 Mhz band and about 45 MHz in 900 Mhz band will be auctioned.” As far as auction of 800 Mhz spectrum band, required by the CDMA service providers, Farooqui said DoT will write to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) asking for their recommendations on the reserve price this week.
When asked when can 800 Mhz auction be expected, he replied, “The timeline, I cannot predict. Once we have the reply from Trai, we have to examine this, it will have to go to the Telecom Commission and EGoM and so on.” Trai had not recommended a reserve price for 800 MHz band and asked DoT to explore the feasibility of EGSM band for this frequency. DoT wrote to the regulator for suggesting the reserve price for 800 MHz but Trai has sought a fresh reference for the recommendations on the issue.
The Government has set a revenue target of Rs 40,874.50 crore this fiscal from spectrum, including auction amount, one-time spectrum charge and annual regular licence fee. Of this amount, the Government is expecting a minimum of Rs 11,000 crore from the upcoming spectrum auction.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had recommended up to 60 per cent cut in the auction reserve price for spectrum in the 900 MHz band in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata circles. It had also suggested 37 per cent cut in the reserve price for spectrum in the 1800 MHz band.