Five rounds of bidding happened on the opening day on June 25, but Wednesday did not see much action
NEW DELHI: An auction of radiowaves that carry voice and data signals for mobile phones ended within two days on Wednesday, garnering less than 12 per cent of the Rs96,238 crore minimum value that the government had estimated for the spectrum on offer.
The auction, where a total of 10GHz of spectrum ranging between 800MHz to 26GHz was offered, got total bids worth Rs11,340 crore, sources with knowledge of the matter said.
Five rounds of bidding happened on the opening day on June 25, but Wednesday did not see much action, leading to officials declaring the end of the auction at around 1130 hours.
The total bids received is more or less the same, as what came in on Tuesday, sources said, adding only 140-150MHz are estimated to have been sold.
On offer were radiowaves in the bands of — 800MHz, 900MHz, 1,800MHz, 2,100MHz, 2,300MHz, 2,500MHz, 3,300MHz and 26GHz.
During the last auction in 2022, which turned out to be a seven-day affair, a record over Rs1.5 lakh crore worth of 5G telecom spectrum was sold, with billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Jio emerging as the top bidder, cornering nearly half of all the airwaves (worth Rs88,078 crore).
At that time, telecom tycoon Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Airtel made a successful bid of Rs43,084 crore, while Vodafone Idea bought Spectrum for Rs18,799 crore.
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