An Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on spectrum pricing has recommended fixing the minimum price for CDMA spectrum in the 800 MHz band at 1.3 times the base price for GSM spectrum in the 1800 MHz band, say news reports.
The EGoM rejected the Department of Telecommunications? (DoT) proposal to keep the reserve price in the 800 MHz band for CDMA players twice as that of spectrum for GSM players in the 1800 MHz band.
Prior to this, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had recommended that the reserve price for CDMA spectrum in the 800 MHz band be fixed at twice that for GSM, which implied that the minimum price for one unit of pan-India spectrum in CDMA band would be about Rs 72.44 billion. Later, it revised this minimum price to for CDMA operators to be 1.3 times that to be paid by GSM players in 1800 MHz band. TRAI has recommended that the minimum reserve price for GSM players in the 1800 MHz should be between Rs 140 to Rs 160 billion from the initial reserve price of Rs 181.11 billion suggested by the TRAI.
