After a bitter experience with the department of telecommunications (DoT) on 3G intra-circle roaming pacts, telecom operators are taking no chance this time.
During the second 2G spectrum pre-bid conference on Thursday, Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone insisted that the government convert the minutes of the meeting into a legally binding document so that DoT may not renege on the clarifications made to them at a later stage.
The three collectively alleged that in spite of clarifying their queries in the run-up to the 3G spectrum auction that 3G intra-circle roaming would be allowed, the DoT later reneged on its words, saying that only the contents of the Notice Inviting Application were legally binding and nowhere did the NIA mention that intra-circle roaming was permitted.
However, it wasn’t clear even at the end of the conference if all the minutes of the meeting would be documented and converted into a legally binding document as the auctioneer and the DoT representatives simply said that most of the relevant questions would be documented. The pre-bid conference was scheduled to clarify prospective bidders’ queries on the auction. It began with the auctioneer, Times Internet Guragon making a presentation on the design of the auction. The ensuing discussions were dominated by the incumbent mobile operators, including the above three, as they tried to understand the subtleties of auction design and ways in which it was different from the previous auction where the government sold 3G and the broadband wireless spectrum in 2010. New operators, including Sistema, Telenor and even Reliance Infotel, were present at the conference. One problem faced by all prospective bidders in the 2G spectrum auctions design was the paucity of time given to them between various bid rounds.
A representative from Airtel said that 20 minutes given between an auction round and the next one was insufficient for the bidders to analyse the data of the previous round and formulate its strategy for the next one. But the auctioneer said that since the aim was to complete at least 6 to 7 rounds of auction within one day so that they could meet the Supreme Court deadline it was difficult to give the bidders more time to study the data. When asked if they will be able to complete the auction by the January 11, 2013 , the auctioneer said that since they begin with the auction of the 1,800 Mhz spectrum first, only towards the end of December they will be able to asess whether they need additional time to accomplish the spectrum auctions.
