Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released its recommendations on the reserve price of FM Radio channels in 264 new cities ranging between ₹25 lakh and ₹9.89 crore. For the 11 border cities and a city in Lakshwadeep in Phase III, the price proposed is ₹5 lakh per channel.

Currently, 243 FM Radio channels are operational in 86 cities. TRAI has made these recommendations on the basis of population of these cities, per capita Gross State Domestic Product, listenership of FM Radio and per capita gross revenue earned by the existing FM radio channels.

Out of the 264 new cities, 253 cities have a population of more than one lakh and the Centre has proposed to put up 798 FM Radio channels for auction in these cities.

“The reserve price for FM radio chancels for each of the 253 new cities has been fixed at 80 per cent of the valuation for each city,” the regulator said. For example, the reserve price for Ludhiana, Punjab, has been set at ₹9.89 crore, while it is ₹5.76 crore for Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh. Reserve price for Dhanbad, Jharkhand, has been set at ₹5.80 crore and for cities such as Vellore and Salem in Tamil Nadu, it is pegged at ₹4.23 crore.

While for Anantnag in Jammu and Kashmir, reserve price has been set at ₹25 lakh; Arrah in Bihar is ₹39 lakh.

The remaining 11 cities have a population of less than one lakh and the Centre has proposed to put up 33 FM Radio channels for auction. TRAI recommends the reserve price for these 11 border cities in Phase III at ₹5 lakh per channel.

In all, 831 FM radio channels will be auctioned through an ascending e-auction process. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has already invited applications for the auction of the first batch of FM Radio frequencies in the existing cities and the last date of application has been set at March 27.