The much awaited 3G auction continues becoming one of the most pestering fairy tales ever. The defence ministry has apparently delayed the 3G auction stating that they would be releasing the committed 20 Mhz of spectrum only in June 2010 instead of December this year. WATBlog has tracked all of these changes and delays continuously, no matter how annoying they were.
The defence services have asked for more time for testing and security clearances before they vacate the spectrum i.e., 20 MHz for 3G and 25 MHz for 2G services and shift to an optical fibre network that has been developed for them by BSNL.
The spectrum availability for other service areas is as follows: Haryana – 40 MHz, Punjab – 35 MHz, Maharastra – 30 MHz, Bihar – 30 MHz, MHz Madhya Pradesh – 40 MHz, Orrisa – 60 MHz, Assam – 30 MHz, Gujarat – 15 MHz, Uttar Pradesh (East) 25 MHz, Uttar Pradesh (West) 20, Himachal Pradesh 20 MHz, North East – 5 MHz, West Bengal -10 MHz, Jammu & Kashmir – 25 MHz.
The telecom service provider has committed to handing over the new network by the end of October. A defence ministry spokesperson declined to comment on the development.
On the other hand, DoT is thinking of altering the terms of the bid document for such high-speed telecom services so that some of lowest successful bidders out of the four planned per circle will have to queue to receive spectrum. The previous final base price was nailed at Rs 3,500 crore after the meeting of the empowered group of ministers. The eGoM also raised objections to DoT’s suggestion that some 3G spectrum should be kept in balance for auctioning in future for deploying new technologies such as LTE. GSM operators said that the spectrum band for LTE is different from what is being currently auctioned and therefore DoT should auction all available spectrum.
“We will go ahead with the auction of 3G spectrum according to the timeline. If the defence forces are unable to vacate the spectrum on schedule and do so only in June, then some successful bidders will be put in queue for spectrum,” a senior DoT official told Business Standard on condition of anonymity.
