The Department of Telecommunications accepting TRAI’s recommendation on implementation of 3G is likely to go ahead with the spectrum auction said a PTI press release. Most of the bandwidth required for 3G is currently held by the DoD.
TRAI in its proposal had recommended a reserve base price of Rs1,050 crores for PAN-India 3G license. With current recommendations, only 5 operators can be accomodated and it will be an interetsing race as we already have 5 service providers(Reliance Communications Ltd through Reliance Infocom, Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd, BSNL, Tata Indicom and Hutch) with PAN-India presence who are desperate for the spectrum.
With, Anil Ambani’s decision to aggressively expand, Reliance Telecom, the GSM arm of RCom for PAN-India presence, race will hot up in the GSM segment. Two other operators, Idea Cellular Limited and Aircel India, which have recently obtained approvals for PAN-India expansion are unlikely to budge out of the 3G race. Where do you see the spectrum rates heading ?
Tags:3G , Mobile India , Telecom India
Looks like that the long wait may come to an end and 3G may be the year 3G is released in India. With an empowered group of ministers slated to meet on the 20th Feb 2008 to review the vaccation of spectrum by defence the field may be open for auctions of 3G spectrum.
The spectrum auctions in the 700 Mhz band in the USA have shown that auctions are the best and most transparent way to allocate spectrum. In fact the ascending auctions with multiple rounds is the best way rather than a closed auction ashas been recommended by TRAI for India.
3G is sorely needed for a range of mobile services including Mobile TV.
Alas! It will not be before the Beijing Olympics which would have been a money spinner for the mobile companies. But Asian Games are not too far away, at least going by the scales of time in which the activities have been going on for the last 3 years on the 3G front !
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