Indian telecom operators Vodafone, Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Reliance Jio and Reliance Communications have applied for participating in the spectrum auction scheduled for February 3.
January 15 (today) is the last day for submitting the applications.
Reuters reported that Reliance Jio Infocomm, the telecom business of Reliance Industries (RIL), Idea Cellular and Reliance Communications have joined the race.
According to a PTI report, Vodafone has filed the first application, followed by Airtel. DoT officials are expecting more operators to apply for spectrum.
Aircel, Tata Teleservices and Uninor have also applied for the spectrum auction.
Videocon Telecom and Loop Mobile did not participate.
Telecom operators can withdraw their applications by January 27.
In the last round of spectrum auction held in March 2013, GSM operators did not bid for radio waves due to high reserve or base price.
Though both Bharti Airtel and Vodafone submitted their applications, Indian telecoms are clueless about final spectrum usage charge, merger and acquisition guidelines, spectrum sharing and its trading.
Meanwhile, Telecom secretary MF Farooqui said on Wednesday that all issues will be resolved before auction.
The UPA government is expecting a minimum of Rs 11,300 crore from the upcoming spectrum auction. It has set a revenue target of Rs 40,874.50 crore for this fiscal from the auction, including auction amount, one-time spectrum charge and annual regular license fee.
About 403 megahertz of 2G spectrum in the 1800 MHz band and about 45 MHz of spectrum in the premium 900 MHz band is being put up for auction.
