Dialling in: Admin price rings louder than satellite spectrum auction bid

While the market for satellite broadband currently is small ($10-15 million), the potential is large as an estimated 30% of the country does not have reliable terrestrial broadband services

It has been an over two-year battle, and the question to be decided was whether to auction satellite broadband spectrum or offer it at an administrative price. The raging debate is now settled in the proposed telecommunications (telecom) Bill submitted in Parliament on Monday, in favour of the latter.

There were four actors in the game.

OneWeb, led by Sunil Mittal, pushed for administrative allocation, locking horns with Reliance Jio, which aggressively demanded an auction as the fairest way to allocate spectrum.

The other difference of opinion was within the government and its institutions — between the Department of Telecommunications