BWA auction to begin on Monday

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The much-awaited Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) auction, which was earlier scheduled to begin two days after the completion of 3G auction, will begin only on Monday, said an official from the Department of Telecom in a brief interaction with CIOL. The government has also approved the results of 3G auction.

“The government today approved the results of 3G auction. The auction for BWA will begin on Monday,” informed DoT spokesperson Satyendra Prakash. Earlier CIOL had reported that the BWA auction would be delayed by a couple of days.

11 companies, viz. Bharti Airtel, Reliance WiMax, Idea Cellular, Aircel, Augere Mauritius Limited, Infotel Broadband Services, Qualcomm, Spice Internet Service Provider, Tata Communications Internet Services, Tikona Digital Networks and Vodafone Essar, are participating in the BWA auction. The base price for a BWA slot has been fixed at Rs.1,750 crore.

The Department of Telecom successfully completed 3G auction on May 19, which has raised revenue of Rs 67718.95 crore for the government, which is much above the government expectation.