India's Auction for Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) started today with 11 telecom players, just days after the auctioning of 3G airwave for third-generation mobile services in the country.
Leading telecom players Bharti Airtel, Reliance Wimax Ltd, Idea Cellular, Aircel, Augere Mauritius, Qualcomm, Infotel Broadband Services, Spice Internet Service Provider, Tata Communications, Tikona Digital Networks and Vodafone Essar are expected to participate in the BWA auction to acquire the two slots on offer.
The reserve or base price is Rs.1750 crore for a pan-India BWA spectrum licence.Two blocks of 20MHz unpaired spectrum in the 2.3GHz band in each of the 22 telecom circles in the country will be up for bidding.
State operators BSNL and MTNL, which have already been been given spectrum, ahead of the private players, will have to pay the equivalent of the winning bid in each service area.
