Spectrum Auction: Bids rise to Rs 63,500 crore till day 4

With the conclusion of the fourth day of Spectrum auction, on Wednesday, after 23 rounds, the government received bids worth Rs 63,500 crore, Aseem Manchanda reported.

This shows, the government has received bids worth Rs 2531 crore today. As on Tuesday, it concluded with bids worth Rs 60,969 crore. 

Like previous three days of auctions, the telecom operators continued to ignore 700MHz and 900MHz bands, which are the highly priced. The 700 MHz spectrum band is the first time be offered in the auction. For this band a firm will need to shell out a minimum of Rs 57,425 crore. 

While,  a lot of activity was seen in 2100 MHz, 2300Mhz and 2500 Mhz bands and most of the action is seen in 1800 Mhz band.

The biggest ever spectrum auction in India had kicked off on Saturday, 1 October 2016. On the first day of auction, the government had got bids worth Rs 55,000 crore. 

Seven telecom companies have applied for this spectrum auction, and together have brought in bids of around Rs 14,563 crore.

The government which will be auctioning the largest ever spectrum 2,354 MHz across seven bands -  700 Mhz, 800 Mhz, 900 Mhz, 1800 Mhz, 2100 Mhz and 2300 Mhz.  The radiowaves can be used for 2G, 3G and high-speed 4G mobile services.

This spectrum auction is expected to fetch bids worth Rs 5.63 lakh crore. 

Reliance Jio, Vodafone, Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices, Reliance Communications and Aircel are in the fray for the spectrum auction.