The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is examining a proposal to charge a premium for awarding contiguous spectrum to operators winning spectrum in the next round of auction.
The government plans to auction spectrum freed up following the cancellation of 122 2G licences by the Supreme Court in 2012.
Earlier, an inter-ministerial group working on the guidelines for the next round of spectrum auction also suggested that the operators could be charged a premium for contiguous spectrum. The spectrum to be put up for sale in the next round of auction is not available in the contiguous blocks of 5 MHz. As a result, operators are likely to get smaller blocks of spectrum in two spectrum bands thereby impacting their ability to offer seamless data services to users.
