The telecom spectrum auction attracted bids worth only ₹63,451 crore at the end of the fourth day on Wednesday, up by around ₹2,500 crore, compared with ₹60,969 crore on Tuesday.
According to sources within the government, there were similar activities on day four as in the previousdays and the auctions seemed to be coming to an end.
The last auctions in 2015 had 115 rounds of biddings and lasted for 19 days. “The present auctions may or may not end tomorrow (Thursday),” a government official told
There were six rounds on Wednesday and the total number of rounds had reached 23 since the first day of biddings that started on Saturday. While there were 1.5 hours of bidding in each round on Saturday, it had come down to one-hour of each round of biddings on Wednesday. From Thursday onwards, it will be 45 minutes of each round of bidding, sources in the Department of Telecom said. The auctions will continue on Thursday and the government got a commitment of 956.8MHz of spectrum so far, out of the total 2,354.75 MHZ put up for auctions this year.
According to experts tracking the industry, indications of the auctions coming to an end are already being seen and the total number of biddings may reach around ₹70,000 crore.
There is not much increase in the biddings and the number of circles are shrinking,” said an industry veteran tracking the development closely.
In the 800Mhz, there were only two circles where the price increased (from the reserve price) in Punjab and Rajasthan. In the 1800MHz, there was an increase of more than 56 per cent (from reserve price) in Mumbai and Uttar Pradesh (East).
There was no bidding in 2100MHz and 2500MHz and 2300MHz was already over on the first day.
There was no activity yet in the 700MHz and 900MHz. The activity had reached 100 per cent by Tuesday, but slowed down on Wednesday. The seven telecom operators, including Airtel, Aircel, Idea, Reliance Communications (RCom), Jio and Vodafone, are participating in the auctions. They had submitted total earnest money deposit (EMD) of around ₹15,000 crore.