Govt expects Rs20,000 cr from next round of spectrum auction

The government is expecting Rs20,000 crore from the second round of spectrum auction later this fiscal, telecom secretary R Chandrashekhar said on friday.

"At this base price, we would expect approximately, I would say, somewhere around Rs 20,000 crore for all the spectrum in 1800 Mhz and 900 MHz that is put on the auction block," Chandrashekhar told reporters on the sidelines of the India Telecom 2012 event organised here by Ficci.

He added that the same auctioneer will be used for the auctions, which is expected to be completed before fiscal-end.

The Cabinet yesterday approved a 30 per cent cut in the reserve price for sale of mobile phone spectrum in the four zones of Delhi, Mumbai, Karnataka and Rajasthan, that went unsold in the recent damp-squib auction.

The reserve price for last month's sale per block in Delhi was Rs 693.06 crore, while the same for Mumbai, Karnataka and Rajasthan was fixed at Rs 678.45 crore, Rs 330.12 crore and Rs 67.08 crore respectively.

The Cabinet also gave its go ahead for auctioning spectrum in 900 MHz band in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata simultaneously with the sale of radiowaves in 1800 Mhz in these four circles.

The base price for 900 MHz band will be twice the reserve price for the 1800 MHz band, where the auction determined price is not available. These circles found no takers on account of high reserve price.

"In Delhi and Mumbai, the reserve price of 900 MHz will be twice the reserve price of 1800 MHz, (but in) Kolkata, it would be twice the auction (discovered) price of 1800 MHz," Chandrashekhar said.