The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has issued the Letter of Intent (LoI) to all the telecom operators that acquired airwaves in the March 2015 spectrum auctions. According to DoT, some amount of spectrum has already been allocated to operators while the allocation of the remaining spectrum is under process. The LoI mentions the effective date for the spectrum allocation.
The government was able to earn Rs 1.1 trillion from the sale of spectrum in four bands, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz during March 2015 auctions. The government put around 470 MHz of spectrum for sale in the four bands and about 11 per cent of the air waves remained unsold. Thereafter the government had received a total upfront payment of over Rs 323 billion from telecom operators against the spectrum sold.
