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May 6, 2010

According to a statement on the Indian department of telecommunication’s Web site, wireless spectrum bids in India for a license to offer speedier mobile services reached almost 110.6 billion rupees or US $2.47 billion on the 22nd day of the auction.

India is auctioning off its wireless spectrum for operating 3G services in the country’s 22 designated telephone service zones.

The government plans to sell 93 licenses to provide high-speed data to wireless phones, smartphones and tablet computers that may raise an estimated 500 billion rupees, helping reduce India’s rapidly rising fiscal deficit.

No less than nine mobile-phone wireless carriers including Vodafone, the world’s largest, and Bharti Airtel, India’s biggest, are vying for the mobile spectrum to offer 3rd generation services in the world’s second-largest wireless market in term of wireless subscribers.

In all, a total of 128 bidding rounds have been completed in the auction and bidding activity will be extended to all zones in round 132 slated for next week, the statement said.

India's government will issue daily updates on the bidding and all data collected from bidders will be made public after the auction has fully completed.

The auction is expected to end May 19.

Last month, the German government took the lead on the deployment of modern 4G technology with the launch of a new wireless spectrum auction involving 360 megahertz of spread across four bands: 800 MHz, 1.8 GHz, 2 GHz and 2.6 GHz.

Some wireless industry analysts were expecting the move, and think there's more of this to come in the next few weeks, as they expect other countries in Europe to follow through.

Germany said the spectrum bands were being awarded “on a technology and services-neutral basis,” though most observers expect the spectrum to be used to launch networks using LTE-based technology.

This is a marked difference from previous auctions that required winning bidders to launch a specific technology conforming to the majority of wireless carriers in Europe.

After India last week, Germany's spectrum auction is expected to set the tone for upcoming 4G auctions across all of Europe some say.

In the last two weeks, no less than six wireless carriers had originally applied to participate in the auction, though only 4 made the final round.

Those qualified bidders include E-Plus Group, Telefonica O2 Germany, T-Mobile Europe and Vodafone.

The wireless spectrum up for bids includes up to 41 frequency blocks split amongst these different bands:

6 blocks of 2 x 5 megahertz paired spectrum in the 800 MHz band.

5 blocks of 2 x 5 megahertz paired spectrum in the 1.8 GHz band.

4 blocks of 2 x 5 megahertz paired spectrum.

1 block of 1 x 5 megahertz of unpaired spectrum.

1 block of 14.2 megahertz unpaired spectrum in the 2 GHz band.

14 blocks of 2 x 5 megahertz paired spectrum.

10 blocks of 1 x by unpaired spectrum in the 2.6 GHz band.

So far, through round 15, the German auction has generated more than $190 million in top bids. Some were expecting a bit less, though.

However, the most sought after wireless spectrum is expected to be in the 800 MHz range.

It will offer greater mobile service propagation characteristics compared to the other bands and should require fewer cell antennas for nationwide coverage requirements.

Most observers expect the totals to fall well short of the $68 billion in winning bids Germany generated from its previous auction of 145 megahertz of 3G spectrum back in June 2000, with some wireless industry analysts expecting the current auction to generate approximately between $10.2 billion and $14.9 billion.

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Source: The Government of India.