‘Rs 35,000 Crore Revenue Estimated from 3G Spectrum Auction’ – Union Budget 2009-’10
The Great Indian 3G saga continues as the Government shoot up their expected income from auctioning 3G spectrum. Along with next generation features on mobile phones, third generation (3G) spectrum will also make big bucks for the government. The auction is expected to take place later this year, estimating Rs 35,000 crore revenue from 3G services, as Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced on Monday while presenting the budget for 2009-10 in the Lok Sabha. About 6 blocks of spectrum may be auctioned for 3G services in addition to three for broadband access wireless. This is vital for high-end services on mobile phones such as video conferencing and high-speed internet.
We, at WATBlog have constantly kept you updated about any progress in the 3G Saga, and we’ll continue to do so. The futuristic 3G services are awaited since almost a year and has been in the news for quite some time. As the 3G auction saga comes close to its end with the auctions slated by the end of this year we shall continue to cover the 3G updates in more detail here at WATBlog.
Estimated Income from 3G For Government
The rise in the estimated revenues could be due to the higher base price being proposed by the Finance Ministry. The total income from collecting telecom licence fees, entry fees and spectrum charges from the operators for the year 2009-10 included in the receipts from the ‘other communications services’ category in the budget is estimated to be Rs 48,335 crore compared with Rs 33,335 crore pegged in the Interim Budget presented by the previous UPA Government. Other major income sources for the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) are licence fee, entry fee, fee to offer V-Sat services, long-distance licence fee and mobile phone services. Telecom operators will be able to provide high-speed Internet and video downloads on mobile phones after the 3G auction without any issues. All telecom players contribute 5% of their annual revenue towards this fund and the unutilised amount in USOF (Universal Service Obligation Fund) is estimated to be over Rs 20,000 crore.
Focus on Rural Areas
Officials in the Department of Telecom (DoT) stated that a bulk of this allotment from USOF will be used for the second phase of the rural mobile project. Under that scheme, the government will subsidize construction of 11,000 telecom towers across 2.4 lakh villages. The Budget also allocated Rs 2,400 crore from the Universal Service Obligation Fund to subsidize unviable mobile, internet and landline operations in rural India.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS Feed OR Email Alerts!
Leave a Comment and Follow the replies through Post Comment Feed