The contrast couldn?t be starker. While the government celebrated the close of spectrum auction for broadband wireless access (BWA) with total revenue including proceeds from 3G auctions touching Rs 106,336 crore, the fatigue was clearly visible on the industry. Only two among the nine major telecom operators who participated in BWA auctions won?Bharti Airtel and Aircel? with others opting out of race. Neither of them could win all 22 telecom circles, with Bharti bagging only four and Aircel eight.
The industry?s disappointment with the costly bids and auction design was earlier highlighted by Bharti Airtel chairman and managing director, Sunil Mittal in an interview with FE, where he called the prices as ?unrealistic.?
The lone surprise winner for all 22 circles turned out to be the little-known Infotel Broadband Services, an Internet service provider. Later in the day, it was announced that Infotel was being acquired by Reliance Industries. BWA spectrum price for the 22 circles ended at a whopping Rs 12,872.52 crore, bringing the government Rs 38,617 crore. BWA spectrum enables high-speed wireless internet access and internet telephony and TV services.
While leading telecom operators like Vodafone-Essar, Tata Communications, Reliance Communications and Idea Cellular left the race saying the expensive bids did not justify a business case, US-based CDMA chip-maker Qualcomm won four circles: Delhi, Mumbai, Kerala and Haryana.
The other winners were Augere Mauritius, which won a single circle (Madhya Pradesh) and Tikona Wireless which bagged five circles ? Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh (east), UP (west), Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh.
Bharti Airtel won Maharashtra, Karnataka, Punjab and Kolkata, where it had failed to get 3G spectrum.
On the lines of 3G auctions, Mumbai and Delhi received the highest bid amounts of Rs 2,292.95 crore and Rs 2,241.02 crore respectively for BWA.
State-owned BSNL and MTNL, which were allotted BWA spectrum earlier, will have to pay Rs 8,338.55 crore and Rs 4,533.97 crore respectively.