One of the major fallouts of the Supreme Court ruling is that the IT and telecom equipment vendors supplying to the new players are likely to lose the million dollar deals. This includes Nokia Siemens, Ericsson, Huawei and Wipro.
Nokia Siemens for instance is managing Uninor's 6 circles, Wipro manages the IT network for Uninor and Huawei is one of the suppliers to MTS.
The only way the vendors can salvage the deals is if these operators manage to continue their operations either through a review petition or by buying spectrum through an auction.
“While we expect them to explore all possibilities, and the situation remains fluid, on the face of it some of these smaller operators will be faced with the choice to either close operations or re-bid for licences,” said a Fitch report.
But it is unclear whether the players will have the stomach or resources to invest more to defend businesses which are still in start-up mode.
The biggest impact is on Chinese vendor Huawei which had bagged deals with almost all the new players.
The vendors are now hoping that the vendors would take remedial measures in the four month window given by the apex court.