According to a senior government official, the Department of Telecom has been urged by the telecom regulator Trai to take into account the department’s suggestions it made about spectrum auctions last year while planning the sale of radiowaves. Gulab Chand, joint wireless advisor for the DoT, stated during a panel at the India Spectrum Management Conference that the government is making every effort to organize spectrum auctions before the end of the current fiscal year or early in the following one.
It will take time to provide recommendations on pricing and other modalities for new frequency bands, he said on Wednesday, adding that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had requested the department to move forward with recommendations for lower frequency bands last year for the 5G spectrum auction.
Telecom regulator,”They (Trai) explained that for legacy bands, reserve price, eligibility requirements, and everything else are with you. Why don’t you carry out the auctions right away while still enforcing all of those criteria, They would require additional time for the next bands, Q (33-50 Ghz) band and V (40-75 Ghz), Chand stated.
According to him, the lower band’s allocation of spectrum is set to expire in large part this fiscal year, and telecom companies want to re-acquire it.
The Union Cabinet determined in September 2021 that spectrum auctions should typically take place in the final quarter of the fiscal year.
Trai Secretary V Raghunandan, who was present at the conference, stated that the regulator informed the DoT that if a spectrum auction needs to be held this year or within the following three years, they can refer to spectrum pricing and other requirements recommended by the regulator for the 5G spectrum auction.
“We have also given a formula of indexing for determining base price,” Raghunandan told reporters.
The government put up for auction in 2022 a total of 72,097.85 MHz of spectrum with a 20-year validity period.
Trai had recommended a base price for spectrum in a number of low (600 MHz, 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz), mid (3300 MHz), and high (26 GHz) frequency bands.
In the 5G telecom spectrum auction that took place last year, a record bid of over Rs 1.5 lakh crore was made.
