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Seven bidders expected to take part when process kicks off in October.
India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) late last week approved applications from seven telcos to take part in its upcoming spectrum auction.
The list of bidders includes market leader Bharti Airtel and disruptive newcomer Reliance Jio Infocomm.
Also on the list are Vodafone India, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices, as well as Reliance Communications (Rcom) and Aircel, which agreed to form a 50:50 joint venture earlier in September.
The seven telcos have made a combined earnest money deposit (EMD) of 146.5 billion rupees (€2 billion). Telcos are allocated eligibility points that correspond to the value of their individual EMD, and can point to the company’s bidding strategy.
With that in mind, Jio has paid the most, depositing INR65 billion in return for 44,506 eligibility points. Vodafone and Idea have paid up INR27.4 billion and INR20 billion respectively, while Bharti Airtel has paid INR19.8 billion. All four operators face no bidding restrictions.
By comparison, Tata’s EMD came to INR10 billion; Rcom paid INR3.1 billion; and Aircel paid INR1.2 billion. These three face various restrictions on which frequency bands they can bid on in certain telecom service areas.
The auction is due to start on 1 October. On the block are 2,200 MHz of spectrum across the 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2.1 GHz, 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz bands. Licences will be valid for 20 years.
India’s government has set a target of raising a minimum of INR5.44 trillion (€71 billion) from the auction; however, there are question marks over whether that sum will be raised. Analyst firm Crisil Research expects bids to total a more modest INR1 trillion.
