As readers may be aware from our previous post, the Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India (“DoT”) had put up spectrum in 4 bands of 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz, spread across the 22 telecom circle of the country. The auction process concluded last week after fierce bidding by eight telecom players over 19 days and 115 rounds.  Our previous posts on the timeline and schedule for the spectrum auctions can be accessed here.

The telecom players which were in the fray to bag spectrum from the auction included Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular, Reliance Communications, Reliance Jio Infocomm, Tata Teleservices, Aircel and Uninor. These operators participated in the auction process comprising of a total of 465 MHz of spectrum across the four bands (103.75 MHz in 800 MHz band, 177.8 MHz in 900 MHz band, 99.2 MHz in 1,800 MHz band and 85 MHz in the 2,100 MHz band ).

In what could be a further boost to the Government, the Supreme Court has lifted a restraint order and allowed finalisation of the auction result. According to reports, these auctions fetched the Government approximately INR 1.09 lakh crore, which translates into INR 10,900,000,000 billion. The Supreme Court direction implies that the Government could have at least INR 28,000 crore from the total auction money before the end of the current financial year.

Earlier, a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra had on February 26, 2015 allowed the scheduled commencement of spectrum auctions, but directed that the results should not be finalised without its approval. This approval came on March 26, 2015, when the bench observed that it may not be proper to block so much of money, when the Government has agreed that the final allocation will be subject to orders passed by the Supreme Court.

Some of the key highlights of the auction were:-

The results of the bidding process, as issued by the DoT can be accessed here and the DoT’s notice regarding the amount due from the telecom players is here.

Original author: Arjun Uppal