3G bid reaches Rs 9,521 cr

The government would earn a minimum of Rs 38,000 crore from the 3G auction, with the pan-India licence reaching a bid of about Rs 9,521 crore on the 18th day, up by over 172 per cent from a base price of Rs 3,500 crore.

The government has already crossed its target of Rs 35,000 crore from 3G auction only, which it had earlier set from auction of both 3G and broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum.

Mumbai continued to be on top with a bid of over Rs 1,506 crore, followed by Delhi with Rs 1,459.96 crore against a reserve price of Rs 320 crore each for both the circles.

On the 18th day, both Delhi and Mumbai had three bidders each.

Out of a total of 22 circles for the 3G spectrum, 17 have three slots, while in rest of the five circles, four blocks of spectrum are available.

Auction for BWA will start after two days of the close of 3G auction, which began on April 9.

Communications and IT minister A Raja had earlier said the government revenues from the auction may go up to Rs 50,000 crore.

Mumbai and Delhi was followed by Maharashtra circle with a highest bid price of Rs 1010.63 crore, with a base price of 320 crore. It had three bidders on 18th day with 3 slots available for auction.

Madhya Pradesh, North-east, Uttar Pradesh (East) and Haryana circles saw no bidders on the 18th day. All these circles have 3 slots available for auction.

The auction would continue till the available number of slots is equal to number of bidders in all 22 circles simultaneously.

A total of 104 clock rounds were completed till the 18th day. The department of telecommunications (DoT) said that activity requirement for bidders would be set to 90 per cent in clock round 104. Till now, the activity level was at 80 per cent.

Six existing major telecom service providers — Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar, Reliance Communications, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices and Aircel — are vying with each other to get 3G spectrum in all the 22 circles.