New Delhi, April 12: The 3G auction has kicked off with the smooth start on 9th April 2010 with top telecom operators i.e. Bharti, Vodafone, R Com and Tata’s, in the fray to acquire the radio waves that could fetch the government up to Rs 35,000 Crore.
This will be the first online auction for spectrum. Online auctioning is a very transparent process and there is no scope of cartelization which means the companies can’t be together deciding the prices.
Online auction is very beneficial for the bidders since the top official can make the decision sitting in their board rooms they don’t have to go out especially for the auction process.
The auction timings start from 9:00am in the morning till 7.30pm in the evening. The Government official said that there target price was Rs. 30000 to Rs. 35000 Crore but they will exceed this by a large margin up to Rs.45000 Crore.
The 3G auction can continue up to 3 weeks and the auction for BWA (Broadband wireless access) will starts 2 days after the closing of the 3G auction. The total processc an take up to 45 days.
The auction has been done for 22 telecom circles. Six of the nine bidders – Bharti Airtel, Reliance Telecom, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices, Aircel and Vodafone Essar- have bid for all the 22 telecom circles.
The Winner will be awarded with the spectrum by the end of the September which means we will be able to enjoy this facility by the end of this year i.e. 2010-2011. With the 3G services the consumer will be able to download high speed data and video streaming.
—Agencies