Telecom Lead Asia: MTS India (Sistema Shyam Teleservices) can continue services across India and Uninor in Mumbai till February 4.
Uninor is planning to participate in the 2G auctions in March 2013 to buy spectrum in Mumbai telecom circle.
Spectrum strategies of MTS India are not known at present.
An apex court bench of Justice GS Singhvi and Justice KS Radhakrishnan passed the order on a Department of Telecommunications (DoT) application seeking that the existing license holders be allowed to continue operations till the auction scheduled for March 2013 was completed.
The court, while adjourning the hearing till February 4, asked the DoT to give the names of the successful bidder companies in the auction held on November 12 and 14, 2012.
The court also asked the DoT to indicate the reserve price that it would fix for the auction scheduled to be held in March.
Recently, Vsevolod Rozanov, president and CEO of SSTL, admitted that MTS India’s revenues declined for the first time since the start of the company’s operations. The subscriber growth during the quarter also suffered on account of uncertainties in the operating environment and due to the predatory practices adopted by competition.
SSTL’s mobile subscriber base increased 0.3 percent quarter-on-quarter to 16.64 million customers. Its mobile subscribers’ MoU for Q3 2012 declined to 263 min vs. 281 min in Q2 2012. Its subscriber market share increased to 1.83 percent in Q3 2012 (vs. 1.77 percent in Q2 2012).
The total revenues during the quarter grew 23 percent over Q3 2011. The revenue growth was driven by 25 percent increase in subscriber base over Q3 2011. By the end of Q3 2012, SSTL’s HSD services covers more than 450 towns in India. The number of data subscribers increased by 5.9 percent over Q2 2012 to 1.83 million.
Sistema Shyam has maintained that it has been unfairly penalized in the February ruling of the Supreme Court and has filed a Curative Petition seeking to restore its licenses. SSTL was the only operator to have applied for a Pan India CDMA spectrum in 2008. There is no finding or suggestion by the CAG report that CDMA spectrum was equally or anywhere near in demand as GSM. SSTL believes it has a strong case and is determined to await its hearing.
MARCH 2013 AUCTION AT DISCOUNT PRICES
The government feels that there will be increased interest from telecom players in March 2013.
Airwaves in the 1800MHz and the 900MHz bandwidth of the GSM spectrum will be auctioned first, followed by the auction of the CDMA airwaves in the 800 MHz bandwidth.
In a bid to attract bidders for the CDMA airwaves-which saw no bidding in the November 2012 auction since all interested parties had pulled out-the panel has recommended lowering the base price of the spectrum by 30-50 percent.
