Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel Likely to Skip 5G Spectrum Auction if it Happens This Year

Telecom operators, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, will likely skip the 5G spectrum auction if the government decides to held it this year. According to an ET Telecom report, both Airtel and Vodafone Idea will miss the auction owing to higher prices recommended by Trai and also the cash crunch issues. As you might be aware of by now, Reliance Jio is the only telecom operator making profits in the country, thanks to its aggressive subscriber addition, while other telcos have been posting losses for a while now. However, if the government decides to keep the auction in the calendar year 2019, Reliance Jio will take active participation so that it can stay ahead of other telcos and also roll out the services first. We have been hearing for a while that Airtel and Vodafone Idea are opposing the 5G spectrum auction this year as they’re slowly getting back into posting profits.

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Bharti Airtel Believes the Prices of 5G Spectrum are Way High

When Trai released the auction prices of the 5G spectrum, every telco expressed their disappointment on the prices. “It doesn’t make sense for us to buy at these levels when the ecosystem won’t be developing for the next two to three years,” a top Bharti Airtel official told ET Telecom. The scenario is pretty much similar to 2016 spectrum auction; To recall, in the previous auction which was held in 2016, telecom operators ignored the entire 700 Mhz spectrum because of steep prices. Later on, Trai said that it would re-auction the 700 Mhz spectrum lowering the prices, but that didn’t happen.