Six firms to bid for pan-India 3G radio airwaves

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Six of the nine applicants for India's upcoming third-generation (3G) spectrum auction will bid for radio airwaves across all 22 telecoms zones in the country, according to a government notice on Tuesday.

The country's top six private-sector mobile firms - Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Vodafone Essar, Tata Teleservices, Idea Cellular and Aircel - have applied to bid for all-India spectrum, the notice on the Department of Telecommunications' website showed.

Etisalat's India telecoms venture, Videocon Telecommunications and S Tel Pvt Ltd will bid for 3G spectrum in selective zones.

S Tel is part-owned by Bahrain Telecommunications, while Japan's NTT DoCoMo owns 26 percent of Tata Teleservices.

The 3G auction begins from April 9 and three slots each in most of the 22 zones will be put on block.

India will also conduct a separate auction for broadband wireless access spectrum, which has drawn interest from 11 firms including wireless chipmaker Qualcomm, two days after the close of the 3G auction.

In its budget, the government has pencilled in revenues of 350 billion rupees ($7.8 billion) from the auctions.