NEW DELHI: The government says all the nine telecom service providers who had applied for bidding in the third generation (3G) radio frequency have qualified for the process.
The telecom operators - Bharti Airtel, Reliance Telecom, Vodafone Essar, Aircel, Etisalat DB Telecom, Idea Cellular, S Tel, Tata Teleservices and Videocon Telecom - would participate in the auction slated for 9 April, according to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) on its website.
DoT said 11 telecom companies - Aircel Ltd, Augere (Mauritius), Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Infotel Broadband Services, Qualcomm, Reliance WiMax, Spice Internet Service Provider, Tata Communications Internet Services, Tikona Digital Networks and Vodafone Essar - have qualified for the broadband and wireless access (BWA) auction which will be held after the conclusion of 3G auctioning.
Four private players would be allotted spectrum in five states - Punjab, Bihar, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir - while the remaining telecom circles will have three private players.
The government has set Rs 35 billion as the base price for pan-India 3G spectrum and Rs 17.50 billion for a BWA services. The government is expected to earn about Rs 200 billion from the process.
3G services, which would allow faster connectivity and enable customers to enjoy Internet TV, video-on-demand, audio-video calls and high-speed data exchange, would start from 1 September.
