The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has amended the terms and conditions of the forthcoming spectrum auction. These amendments have come in the wake of the 276 questions raised by operators in the run-up to the auction.
Originally, as per the Notice Inviting Application released by DoT prior to the postponement of spectrum auction, operators were required to provide information regarding any new technology that they wanted to deploy one year ahead of conducting trials. However, the clause did not cover 2G (GSM and CDMA) or 3G technologies. However, the revised clause states that a player acquiring spectrum in the forthcoming auction shall provide details of the technology proposed to be deployed for operation within one month of obtaining the license, if the technology happens to be other than GSM/WCDMA (3G) and LTE (4G).
Further, DoT has clarified that operators such as Uninor, Videocon and Sistema Shyam TeleServices Limited, which had won spectrum in the previous auctions held in November 2012 and March 2013, need not submit performance bank guarantees (PBG) for the forthcoming auction. However, a PBG in the prescribed format shall be submitted for Rs 350 million by the new entrant and Rs 210 billion by an existing licensee per service area for a minimum period of six years before signing the licence agreement. In addition, as per the revised rules, operators cannot mortgage spectrum to raise funds, however, DoT is working towards modifying the tri-partite agreements (TPA) that were earlier signed with banks to facilitate funding for the upcoming auction.
Earlier, the TPAs signed in the previous auctions had allowed operators to raise fund by mortgaging the spectrum held by them.
