₹1.5 lakh cr bids; Reliance Jio top bidder
India's biggest ever auction of telecom spectrum received a record ₹1.5 lakh crore of bids, with Mukesh Ambani's Jio cornering nearly half of all the airwaves sold with an ₹88,078 crore bid.
Richest Indian Gautam Adani's group, whose entry in the auction was billed by some as another flash point in the rivalry with Ambani, paid ₹212 crore for 400 MHz, or less than one per cent of all spectrum sold, in a band that is not used for offering public telephony services.
Telecom tycoon Sunil Bharti Mittal's Bharti Airtel made a successful bid of ₹43,084 crore, while Vodafone Idea Ltd bought spectrum for ₹18,799 crore.
Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said of the 72,098 MHz of spectrum offered across 10 bands, 51,236 MHz, or 71 per cent, was sold.
In all, bids worth ₹1,50,173 crore were received, he said, adding the government will in the first year get ₹13,365 crore.
Barring the 1800 MHz band, for which Jio and Airtel engaged in fierce bidding, spectrum in all bands was sold at reserve (base) price, he noted.
The mop-up from the 5G spectrum, capable of offering ultra-high speed mobile internet connectivity, is almost double of ₹77,815 crore worth 4G airwaves sold last year and triple of ₹50,968.37 crore garnered from a 3G auction in 2010.
Reliance Jio was the top bidder, offering a cumulative bid of ₹88,078 crore for 24,740 MHz of airwaves across five bands capable of offering speeds about 10 times faster than 4G, lag-free connectivity, and can enable billions of connected devices to share data in real-time.
It acquired the coveted 700 MHz spectrum that can provide 6-10 km of signal range with one tower and forms a good base for offering fifth generation (5G) services, in all 22 circles or zones in the country.
Adani group bought
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