Recommendation on spectrum auction by mid-April: Trai

Telecom regulator Trai is likely to come up with recommendation on spectrum auction by mid of April, Chairman JS Sarma said today.

"It should be out in the fortnight of April," Sarma told reporters on sidelines of Convergence India 2012 in response to expected timeline for recommendation on spectrum auction.

The recommendation is expected to give guidance on key issues like base price of spectrum, amount of spectrum that should be allocated to a bidder and eligible participants, among others.

He also mentioned that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is working on recommendations on Unified Licensing regime which should be out by end of this month.

"We have received comments of stakeholders. We are working on it. It should be out by end of this month," Sarma said.

In the recommendation, Trai is expected to give out detailed guidelines on Unified Licences that will be issued to all telecom companies in future and will be delinked from spectrum.

Trai in its draft guidelines of Unified Licences has proposed a fee of Rs 20 crore for a national-level unified licence under the new regime, which suggests that there will be only four types of licences in future as against many across the communications sector, at present.

Trai had issued consultation paper on 'Auction of Spectrum' on March 7. The regulator in this paper had sough industry view on amount of spectrum to be auctioned, liberalisation and reframing of spectrum in 800/900 MHz bands, structure of auction, spectrum block size, eligibility criteria for participating in the auction, reserve price, roll out obligations, spectrum usage charges and trading.

The consultation paper showed 60 Mhz and 413.6 Mhz of spectrum will be vacated in 800 Mhz and 1800 Mhz spectrum bands respectively from the cancellation of 122 2G licences by Supreme Court.

In the consultation paper issued, Trai has put forward various models that can be used for auction. Similarly for deciding minimum value for spectrum to start auction, Trai has not specifically indicated price but has asked for model that should be used for determining the base price.