TRAI released Consultation Paper on Spectrum Sale

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on 23 July 2013 released consultation paper on valuation and reserve price of spectrum for the third auction.

It was on 10 July 2013, the Department of Telecommunications asked for TRAI's recommendations on the applicable reserve price for the auction of spectrum in 800 Mhz (CDMA), 900 Mhz and 1800 Mhz (GSM) bands. So, in perspective of asked recommendation TRAI decided to issue consultation paper raising specific issues for consideration of stakeholders.

Now, the government is seeking comments on these issues from the stakeholders by 14 August and counter-comments by 31 August 2013.

The new consultation paper comes after seeing the failure of the first two rounds of spectrum auction. The telecom industry had accredited steep base price for this.

The government had now put on auction 71.25 MHz of spectrum in the first round of auction held in November, 2012 which basically includes 60MHz of CDMA spectrum. The auction is expected to bring together only 9407.64 crore Rupees against the spectrum worth 28000 crore Rupees at reserve price.