3G auction by October: Govt

Communications Minister A Raja today said the auction for the much awaited third generation (3G) spectrum would be completed by the end of October this year. He also indicated that the rollout of 3G services may commence this year.

Raja also clarified that the CDMA operators would also have to go through an auction process to acquire 3G spectrum.

Earlier, there was not much competition in the CDMA section as there were only two players.

Now, with another player joining, the competition has emerged there as well. So, the spectrum would now be auctioned according to Trai’s recommendations, instead of allocating it on the basis of subscriber base, the minister said.

He also said that the auction process for the CDMA operators would be conducted simultaneously with that for the GSM players.

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) recently deferred the opening of bids for the 3G spectrum from September 3 to September 22. The pre-bid conference, which was to be held on August 27, has also been re-scheduled to September 8.

However, according to the revised schedule issued by the communications ministry, there will be no delay in the date of identifying the agency.

The finalisation of the bids will be completed by September 30 as announced earlier by Telecom Secretary Siddhartha Behura.