The Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on telecom plans to approach the Supreme Court to extend the August 31, 2012 deadline to complete the 2G spectrum auction, say news reports.
Following the cancellation of 122 licences in February 2012, the Supreme Court has announced the deadline for the spectrum auction as August 31, 2012. However, owing to the consistent delay in decisions on the base price of spectrum and one-time payment of licence fee by the exiting operators, the government has been unable to stick to its original schedule.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) managed to release the guidelines for spectrum auction in July, 2012. In a recent development DoT has appointed Times Internet Limited as the auctioneer to conduct forthcoming spectrum auction. Leading up to the spectrum auction the DoT to complete various processes such as responding to the queries of potential bidders, inviting applications and giving time to companies for submissions, finalising eligible bidders, public information sessions and mock auction.
