Companies that want to participate in the upcoming spectrum auction will have to apply by October 19. The auction for GSM spectrum in the 1800 Mhz band will start on November 12, the Department of Telecom said on Monday. The sale for CDMA spectrum in the 800 Mhz will commence two days after the auction for GSM spectrum is complete.

This will give an opportunity to new players that miss out on GSM spectrum to stay in the game through the CDMA auction. According to the information memorandum released by the DoT, a mock auction will be held on November 7 and 8.

New Deadline

This comes even as the Supreme Court agreed to fix a new deadline for conducting the auction. The apex court has directed the Government that it should complete the auction by January 11, 2013 with a warning that the court will initiate contempt proceedings if the Centre failed to meet the new deadline. This is the second extension given by the court. The Supreme Court also allowed new operators to continue services till January 18, instead of September 7.

New operators gave a guarded response to the developments. “We will now study this document (information memorandum) closely in order to finalise our position towards the spectrum,” Telenor Group said in a statement.

Sistema Shyam said it was hoping to get a positive response to its curative petition filed in the Supreme Court. “Since our immediate focus is on the curative petition, it will be premature for us to say anything at this stage about our participation in the auction,” the company said.

The DoT information memorandum gives details of the auction rules, the amount of spectrum available and the base price for each of the 22 circle. Delhi has the highest reserve price at Rs 693 crore and Rs 900 crore for GSM and CDMA spectrum respectively. This followed by Mumbai at Rs 678 crore and Rs 881 crore respectively. The base price for pan-India spectrum is Rs 14,000 crore for the 1800 Mhz band and 1.3 times that for the 800 Mhz band.

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