Jio leads 5G auction
India’s biggest ever auction of airwaves stretched for 40 rounds of bidding in 7 days; UP East circle, which has 10crore subscribers, in focus; It pushed auction prices to over Rs160 cr per MHz against reserve price of Rs91 cr per MHz, breaching the Rs153-cr base price level of the 2021 auction
New Era Unfolding
- Reliance Jio, Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Adani Enterprises in the race
- 72 GHz of radiowaves worth Rs4.3trn for sale
- Jio, Airtel in intense bidding for coveted 1800 Mhz
- Reliance Jio bids for over Rs84,500 cr
- Airtel's bids for Rs 46,500 cr
- Vodafone Idea placed bids of Rs 18,500 cr
- Adani Enterprises bids for Rs5,000 cr
- 5G speed about 10x faster than 4G
- It offers lag-free connectivity, enables billions of connected devices to share data in real-time
- It powers ultra-low latency connections
- It'll revolutionise e-health, connected vehicles, more-immersive augmented reality and metaverse experiences, etc
New Delhi: A record over Rs 1.5 lakh crore worth of 5G telecom spectrum was sold in a seven-day auction ending on Monday, which saw billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Jio emerging as the top bidder to consolidate its leadership position. Sources with direct knowledge of the matter said provisional data puts the total bids at Rs1,50,173 crore. The mop-up from the 5G spectrum, capable of offering ultra-high speed mobile internet connectivity, is almost double at Rs77,815 crore worth 4G airwaves sold last year and triple of Rs 50,968.37 crore garnered from a 3G auction in 2010. Reliance Jio was the top bidder to the airwaves capable of offering speeds about 10 times faster than 4G, lag-free connectivity, and can enable billions of connected devices to share data in real-time. It was followed by Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea Ltd. New entrant Adani group is said to have bought 26 Mhz spectrum for setting up a private telecom network. The sources said details of which company bought how much spectrum would be known once the data from the auction is fully compiled. Both Bharti and Jio have likely built a pan-India spectrum footprint for 5G, with Vodafone Idea's selective participation. The government had put on offer spectrum in 10 bands but received no bids for airwaves in 600 MHz, 800 MHz and 2300 MHz bands. About two-thirds of the bids were for the 5G bands (3300 Mhz and 26 GHz), while more than a quarter of the demand came in the 700 Mhz band - a band that had gone unsold in the previous two auctions (2016 and 2021). In the auction conducted last year - that had lasted two days - Reliance Jio picked up spectrum worth Rs 57,122.65 crore, Bharti Airtel bid about Rs 18,699 crore, and Vodafone Idea bought spectrum worth Rs 1,993.40 crore.
