Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Minister of Communications and IT expects marginal increase in tariffs for telecom services following the conclusion of spectrum auctions.
According to the minister, the validity period of spectrum acquired by the operators is 20 years and as per analysis, the yearly load on players is going to be about Rs 53 billion, which means an increase in call rates by Re 0.13 per minute.
As many as eight operators participated in the spectrum auction held by the government in March 2015. All the participating players managed to acquire spectrum in the auctions except Telewings Communications which provides services under the brand name Uninor.
In all, 470.75 MHz of spectrum was put up by the government for auction in various licence service areas across 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz bands compared with 390 MHz and 426 MHz spectrum put up for auctions in the earlier rounds of spectrum auctions held in November 2012 and February 2014, respectively.
