The government is set to reap another bonanza from the auction of wireless broadband (BWA) spectrum that would begin from Monday. Even if the government gets half the money from the BWA auction that it got from 3G, it will would bring the total money generated by the auctions of spectrum to around Rs 93,000 crore.
In case the price of pan-India BWA licence reached the same level as 3G then the revenue from the auctions will breach the Rs 1,10,000 crore mark.
“The auction for BWA is going to be intense and competitive,” said Mr Harit Shah, telecom analyst, Karvy Broking. Mr Kunal Bajaj, director, BDA said that the auction for the BWA will be tough. “But I doubt that the prices for pan-India BWA licence will reach the 3G level,” he added.
The auction for BWA spectrum could be more competitive than 3G as there are 11 players in race for two blocks of 20 MHz of spectrum that is on sale. There were nine operators for the 3 to 4 slots of 3G spectrum. BSNL and MTNL, who have already got the BWA spectrum will pay the price discovered in the auction.
All the major telecom players including Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance, Idea and Tata are in race for the BWA licence. The telecom players who didn’t get spectrum for the circles of choice in 3G auction may try to grab BWA spectrum. Besides telecos, international technology major Qualcomm is one of the serious contenders in the race for acquiring BWA.
The American major wants to introduce a new type of technology in BWA, which it is promoting for the first time anywhere in the world.
Therefore experts expect it to bid aggressively during the BWA auction pushing up the overall price of the BWA spectrum. The government has set Rs 1,750 crore as the base price of BWA as compared to Rs 3,500 crore for 3G.