The country?s two leading operators, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone India have submitted their applications for participating in the forthcoming spectrum auction scheduled for February 3, 2014.
Both Vodafone India and Bharti Airtel have submitted their applications even as government is yet to take a final decision on critical issues including spectrum usage charge, merger and acquisition guidelines, spectrum sharing and trading.
For the forthcoming round of spectrum auction, January 15, 2014 is the last date for submission of applications and the players can withdraw their applications by January 27, 2014.
The government is putting up about 403 MHz of 2G spectrum in the 1,800 MHz band and about 45 MHz of spectrum in the 900 MHz band for auction in the forthcoming round of spectrum auction.
The government has set a total revenue target of Rs 408.74 billion from spectrum auction, including auction amount, one-time spectrum fee and the annual licencing fee in 2014.
It is pertinent to note that none of the GSM operators had participated in the previous round of spectrum auction held in March 2013. They had cited high reserve price as the main reason for staying away from the auctions. Even during November 2012 auctions, the response was not very encouraging.
