India’s biggest-ever spectrum auction gets under way

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) today commenced India's biggest ever spectrum auction in which airwaves worth Rs5.66 lakh crore have been put up for sale.

The auction kicked off at around 10 am and will continue till 7 pm.

Seven mobile operators - Reliance Jio Infocom, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular, Reliance Communications, Aircel and Tata Teleservices - are participating in the auction.

Jio has submitted the maximum earnest money for the sale, which allows the operator to buy spectrum in the 700 Mhz band across the country. The auction is crucial as it will allow telcos to firm up their spectrum holdings for data as most of the bands which are put on sale can be used for data.

As much as 2,354.55 megahertz (MHz) of frequencies are being put up for auction in seven bands - 700 Mhz, 800 Mhz, 900 Mhz, 1,800 Mhz, 2,100 Mhz, 2,300 Mhz and 2,500 MHz.

According to analysts, Vodafone and Idea are likely to bid aggressively in 1,800 Mhz and 2,300 MHz as they need to firm up their 4G spectrum. Jio might go for 700 MHz also whereas Airtel is expected to fill in gaps for the circles where it does not have 4G spectrum.

The amount of spectrum that is being put up for auction is more than any previous auctions, which will enable bidders to provide good quality of service according to international benchmarks and the issue of spectrum fragmentation that has dogged the telecom sector will be a thing of the past.

To make the auctions bidder-friendly, the government plans to assign spectrum won in the auction within 30 calendar days from date of making the payment. It takes 10 days to make a payment after the auction ends.