By R. Jai Krishna
NEW DELHI--India's federal cabinet will take a final decision on
the base price for an upcoming auction of telecom bandwidth by Feb.
4, Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said Tuesday.
Mr. Sibal's comment comes a day after the Supreme Court allowed
telecom companies whose licenses were revoked by it last year to
continue providing services until Feb. 4. The court had previously
asked the companies to either get new bandwidth by Jan. 18 or close
operations.
The Supreme Court had cancelled the licenses citing
irregularities in their allotment in 2008. It had then asked the
government to take back the airwaves allocated under the canceled
licenses and auction them.
The Department of Telecommunications held an auction in
November, but could sell only a part of the airwaves due to weak
demand. It filed an application with the Supreme Court last week
seeking an extension of the Jan. 18 deadline so that it could
complete the sale of the remaining bandwidth.
The court is scheduled to hear the application Feb. 4.
The government plans to conduct the next round of auction
starting March 11, including for airwaves in the 800-megahertz
frequency band used for providing services on the code division
multiple access platform. In November, no company had bid for
bandwidth to provide CDMA-based services.
A panel of Indian ministers had recently recommended the cabinet
to set a lower base price for the auction in March, compared with
what it had fixed for the first round in November so as to ensure
better participation from companies.
The CDMA spectrum is crucial for companies like Russia's Sistema
JSFC (AFKS.RS), which lost licenses in 21 of India's 22
telecom-service areas under the court order.
Another foreign company affected by the order--Telenor ASA
(TEL.OS) of Norway--got bandwidth in six service areas through the
November auction of bandwidth for providing services using the
global system for mobile communications, or GSM, technology.
Write to R. Jai Krishna at krishna.jai@dowjones.com
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