News
India Settles for only Three 3G Licences
(12 Jan 2010, BWCS Staff)India's Department of Telecommunications has said it will sell off only three lots of spectrum for 3G mobile phone services across all of the country's 22 telecom circles. Originally the government had planned to sell four national licences at the coming auction. The successful bidders will be made to pay a deposit within 15 days of winning the spectrum. According to the draft notice inviting applications, "The government has decided to assign through auction up to three blocks of 2 x 5MHz of paired spectrum in the 2.1GHz band in each of the 22 service areas. This will be in addition to the one 2 x 5MHz block which has been allocated to BSNL/MTNL."
The 3G auction, which has been repeatedly postponed, was recently put back yet again from January 14th until February 12th. The major stumbling block to the sale has been a series of disagreements between the DoT and the Ministry of Defence.
The final date for submission of applications is now set at January 25th. The pre-qualification of bidders will be announced on February 5th. Meanwhile, not all of the 3G spectrum is cleared for use and the government has decreed that successful bidders may not gain access to these parts of the airwaves until September of this year.
One more block of 2 x 5MHz spectrum in 2.1GHz is expected to be made available in January 2013, which will be offered only when available. The winners would also need to acquire a unified access service licence.
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