The auction of the wireless broadband (BWA) is going strong. The second day of the auction, saw the value of a single pan-India BWA license jump by 82 per cent from the base price.
The bidding for BWA is going much more aggressively than 3G spectrum. There is still excess demand in 12 circles, with highest demand coming for the Delhi circle at 6. The price of a single p
an-India BWA license reached Rs 3,197.79 crore at the end of second day of bidding. This means that the government is assured of at least a minimum revenue of Rs 9,593 crore from BWA auction. This takes the revenue from the auctions of 3G and BWA spectrum to Rs 77,312 crore.
BSNL and MTNL, who already have got the BWA spectrum will pay the price discovered in the auction.
Even if government gets half the money from the BWA auction as compared to 3G, it will mean that the total money generated by the auctions of spectrum will be around Rs 93,000 crore. In case the price of pan-India BWA license reaches the same level as 3G then the revenue from the auctions will breach the Rs 1,10,000 crore mark.
The centre has set Rs 1,750 crore as the base price of BWA as compared to Rs 3,500 crore for 3G. The price of single 3G license had reached Rs 16,751 crore which resulted in a revenue of Rs 67,718 crore for the government.
The auction for BWA spectrum could be more competitive than 3G as there are 11 players in the race for two blocks of 20 MHz of spectrum which is on sale. There were nine operators for the 3 to 4 slots of 3G spectrum. All the major telecom players like Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance, Idea and Tata are in race for the BWA license.
Besides telecos, international technology major Qualcomm another serious contender is in the race for acquiring BWA.