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    Working on mega sale of airwaves by July: Telecom Secretary JS Deepak

    Synopsis

    Telecom Secretary JS Deepak said the govt is working towards a mega sale of 2G, 3G and 4G airwaves by June-July and would a take a call next mnth on the starting prices of 7 bands.

    ET Bureau
    BARCELONA: Telecom Secretary JS Deepak said the government is working towards a mega sale of 2G, 3G and 4G airwaves by June-July and would a take a call next month on the starting prices of seven bands, including the coveted 700 MHz 4G band, recommended by the sector regulator.

    “We are working for an auction in June-July and will formulate an opinion on recommendations with the time in mind,” Deepak told reporters on Wednesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

    “I would be surprised if we are not ready by March (form a view on the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s pricing recommendations),” he added.

    Trai's spectrum pricing suggestions need to be ratified by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the Cabinet.

    The DoT wants the spectrum sale to be “a triple win—customers should get reasonable good quality networks, operators should get business and the government should get revenue”.

    According to the telecom secretary, the private sector is optimistic about India. “I have been talking to the private sector that seems bullish on India,” he said.

    Deepak, who stepped into the DoT hot seat last month, is credited with successfully conducting the first e-auction of spectrum six years ago, which helped the government raise close to Rs 1.067 lakh crore and also set the roadmap for future auction of natural resources.

    His first major task could well be taking a call on the pricing of 4G airwaves in the 700 MHz band, especially since Trai’s suggested base price of .`11,485 crore for a pan-India unit of this efficient spectrum has been decried by India’s biggest mobile carriers as “way too expensive and unaffordable”.

    Trai has similarly pegged the base price of airwaves in the 800 MHz band—also used for 4G—for the entire country (barring three small circles of Jammu & Kashmir, Assam and the Northeast) at Rs 5,819 crore per unit, which is 60% higher than the minimum price of the previous auction.

    The Trai-recommended base price of 2100 MHz 3G spectrum at Rs 3,746 crore, however, is only a tad higher than Rs 3,705 crore previously, while the base price for 1800 MHz spectrum has been set at Rs 2,873 crore compared with Rs 2,191crore earlier.

    The starting price of airwaves in the 2300 MHz and the 2500 MHz bands, in turn, have been pegged by the regulator at Rs 817 crore per MHz. The 2300 MHz band was first sold in 2010 and hasn’t been auctioned since due to technology issues, which delayed the 4G plans of holders such as Jio.

    At the Trai-suggested base prices, the auction of seven bands of 2G, 3G and 4G airwaves can generate a whopping Rs 544,000 crore for the government, which is nearly five times the around Rs 110,000 lakh crore raised in the previous sale in March 2015.



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