Lower price of airwaves, don’t delay auction, says regulator
NEWDELHI: The telecom regulator on Wednesday recommended a sharp cut in the base price for 4G airwaves and auctioning all the available spectrum, in a relief for the telecom industry caught in a bruising tariff war.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) proposed fixing the base price for the 700 MHz band at ₹6,568 crore per MHz—43% less than ₹11,485 crore set in the 2016-17 auction.
Similarly, for airwaves in the 800 MHz and 900 MHz band, Trai suggested lowering of prices by 21% and 51%, respectively. For airwaves in 3300-3600 MHz, it suggested a floor price of ₹492 crore per MHz.
The high-value 700MHz spectrum is considered very efficient for deploying 4G LTE networks and has greater structural penetration. TRAI said the 3300-3600 MHz band, which is most likely to emerge as the primary band for the roll out of 5G services, should be auctioned as a single band and in the block size of 20MHz each. The government has not auctioned any spectrum in 2017-18.
During consultations with Trai, most operators were of the view that the industry was going through a phase of consolidation and it was important to allow the market to settle down since prospective buyers may not be able to take a decision on spectrum purchase.
However, the telecom regulator said that “there is definite amount of visibility as far as consolidation of industry is concerned. Therefore, it would not be entirely correct to say that industry is not in a position to assess its spectrum requirements”.