The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Thursday recommended a reserve price of ₹3,104 crore per megahertz for CDMA spectrum, which is 15 per cent more than the ₹2,685 crore per megahertz it had proposed in February for the 800 Mhz CDMA band.
The new reserve price of ₹3,104 crore is 72 per cent higher than the ₹1,800 crore rate in the 2013 auction.
In its recommendations in February this year, the regulator had also discussed the steady decline in the CDMA subscriber base and lower average revenue per user (ARPU) compared with GSM services.
It said the Department of Telecom should take back MTNL’s entire spectrum holding in the 800 MHz band.
In a statement, TRAI said BSNL should be allowed to retain only one CDMA carrier in all licence service areas (LSAs) except in Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and the North-East, where it can retain both carriers.
This was in response to a DoT letter dated December 12, 2013, wherein it sought the regulator’s recommendations on the reserve price for the 800 MHz band in all the service areas in terms of the TRAI Act.
The Authority issued its recommendations on the ‘Reserve Price for Auction of Spectrum in the 800 MHz Band’ on February 22 this year.
“The Authority observed that telecom service providers in a number of countries in the Americas, Australia and Asia had deployed HSPA technology1 in this band. In the last few years, a few deployments of LTE2 (Long-term Evolution 2) and even LTE-Advanced have come up in this band,” it said.
The entire spectrum available with the Department of Telecom in the 800 MHz band should be put up for auction, it added.