The spectrum auctions, which completed 14 days on Thursday adding a provisional amount of Rs 1.09 lakh crore in the government’s kitty, saw the price increase over the reserve price of 800 MHz on a per-MHz basis cross that of 900 MHz, thus making it more valuable than the latter.
The other interesting aspect is that the price of the 800 MHz band in Delhi on a per MHz basis overtook that of Mumbai.
The price increase of 800 MHz over the reserve price stood at 79.1% compared to 78.6% for 900 MHz. The percentage increase for 2100 MHz was 5.1% while that of 1800 MHz was 15.8%.
On a pan-India basis now the price of per MHz spectrum in the 900 MHz band is at Rs 8,000 crore while that of 800 MHz is at Rs 5,000 crore.
For 900 MHz there’s 5 MHz spectrum in all circles, but in the case of 800 Mhz only some five circles have contiguous spectrum of 5 MHz, the value of 800 MHz spectrum is now more than that of 900 MHz.
On Thursday, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and North-East saw the price increase in the 800 MHz band. Therefore, from the trends it can be inferred that the fight for 900 and 2100 MHz is over now except say in AP which may still see a bid for the latter. The auctions may continue for more than a day now only due to the fight for 800 MHz.
FE reported earlier this week that in the last few days the auction is continuing not because the fight for the 900 MHz band is getting bloodier by the day but because the fight has now shifted to the 800 MHz.
The top four operators – Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular, Reliance Communications – along with new player Reliance Jio are locked in a bitter fight for 800 MHz spectrum across circles where this is available in contiguous blocks of either 5 MHz or 3.75 MHz. The reason being that a contiguous block of either 5 MHz or even 3.75 MHz of 800 MHz band is good enough for providing data services using LTE technology.