I’ve been desperately waiting to get my hands on 3G and I am amongst those hundreds of thousands of people who already bought a 3G supported mobile handset for the same. Well the latest update on the whole 3G Spectrum saga is the auction has been delayed yet again and will take place only next fiscal year,hopefully.
Last reported on Jan 29, Government was going to setup a a board comprising a (GoM) group of ministers to resolve the issues and has not been done yet. The issues the board is hoped to resolve include setting the base price for the auction and finalizing the number of slots firms can bid for in the 20 of India’s 22 service areas to be covered by the sale.
Whie the auction is delayed, the Finance Ministry has reportedly scaled down the estimated income from auctioning 3G spectrum. The Budget estimate for the year 2009-10 pegs revenues from the auction at Rs 20,000 crore only, which was earlier hoped to earn as much as Rs 30,000 crore. The total income from collecting telecom licence fees, entry fees and spectrum charges from the operators for the year 2009-10 is estimated at Rs 33,335 crore compared with the revised estimate of Rs 13,174 crore during 2008-09.The finance ministry.
The Finance Ministry has reportedly made an allocation of only Rs 23.5 crore towards rolling out an optic fibre cable network for the defence forces, despite DoT quoating a total requirement of nearly Rs 10,000 crore for the project and DoT will now have to take a proposal to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs to get higher allocation.
