The Cabinet has decided on a reserve price of Rs 3705 crore per Mhz for the 2100 Mhz band for the upcoming spectrum auctions, telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said here today.
At a press conference, the minister said the government had decided to accepted the Telecom Commission's recommendation to price the 3G spectrum at that price, 36 percent higher than suggested by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
"A 5 MHz Block will be offered in all service areas except Jammu & Kashmir, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal and Punjab. Thus a total of 85 MHz in 17 Licensed Service Areas (LSAs) is being put to auction," a statement released by the government said.
"The estimated revenues from the auction of 2100 MHz Band are Rs 17555 crore of which Rs 5793 crore is expected to be realized in the current financial year," it added.
Besides the 2100 Mhz band, the government will auction 103.75 Mhz of spectrum in the 800 Mhz band, 177.8 Mhz in the 900 Mhz wavelength and 99.2 Mhz of 1,800 Mhz spectrum, in an auction that is expected to garner anywhere between Rs 80,000 crore and Rs 1 lakh crore for the state kitty.
"We have taken the market-discovered price, based on the auction price during the 2010 auction [when 2,100 Mhz spectrum was last sold]," the telecom minister said.
Prasad added that over and above this, the government has identified 40 bands in the 3 Mhz-4Mhz space and 31 bands will be released by the defence services, and which will be co-exist with other users of spectrum such as civil aviation etc.
"The Cellular Operators of Association of India would be extremely disappointed with the acceptance of the Telecom Commissions pricing. We thought that the TRAI pricing was very reasonable, analytically correct and sound," COAI Director General Rajan Mathews had told CNBC-TV18 when he was asked about the possibility of prices of being raised, just ahead of the announcement.
The increased reserve prices would hamper the government's Digital India pitch by putting pressure on prices, he said.
"This is the fundamental raw material with which all telecom companies operate. Ultimately this will have to be passed on and will dampen the investments that will be made in the network rollout," he added.
Reacting to the minister's assertion that there was no dearth of spectrum, Micromax chairman and former Bharti Airtel CEO Sanjay Kapoor said he expects data prices to increase.
"The cost of producing a fully loaded megabyte is probably more like between Rs 0.55-0.60. The best operator in the market place is recovering Rs 0.27-0.28 from the consumer. You can treat spectrum on a marginal costing basis for 5 Mhz [that has been put up for sale] but you can't do it for perpetuity. It is just a matter of time where all these operators will have to begin to charge a fully loaded price from the consumers."
Read the transcript of Kapoor's interview on the next page.
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