BWA, 3G auctions to be held together: Raja

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Union Minister for Telecommunication and Information Technology A Raja today said that the Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum auction would be held along with the 3G auction.

“We will hold BWA spectrum auction along with 3G auction,” said Raja.

The minister also denied any issue pending with the Department of Space that could delay auction of BWA spectrum.

The Department of Telecom has announced that four block of unpaired 20 Mhz in the 2.3 and 2.5 GHz bands would be allotted in each 22 service areas for BWA auction. One block in 2.5 GHZ band was kept reserved for BSNL and MTNL.

The Department of Space has earlier asked to leave some buffer spectrum in frequency band of 2.5 Ghz so that it should not interfere with spectrum being used for satellite communication.

The Union Minister assured that the date for pre-bid conference for 3G and BWA spectrum auction will be announced by the end of this week.

Raja was talking to media on the sidelines of the launch of software tools and fonts for six languages namely Kashmiri, Bangla, Sindhi, Konkani, Manipuri and Santali for free public distribution. These language software had been developed jointly by C-DAC, Technology Development for Indian Languages and Society for Natural Language Technology Research (SLNTR) - a society set-up under IT department of West Bengal.