Founder of Bharti Airtel, Sunil Mittal, on Monday said that spectrum pricing has really gone out of control and the policy makers should review it as this comes in the way of offering affordable services to users.
"Whatever has been paid in the last three or four auctions is not sustainable to give the low value proposition to the customer. Telecom has to be a means to an end, it cannot be an end in itself. If you want to pick up a lot of money upfront, then you are compromising the investments for rollout and infrastructure, " Mittal said while.speaking to select media on the sidelines of Mobile World Congress.
Mittal said that if spectrum price is not rationalised then future auctions could see operators backing away.
"You see what happened in the last auction. Who is going to buy the expensive spectrum, there is no capacity to buy expensive spectrum. Don’t forget in the earlier auctions, price of 800 MHz and 1800 MHz were lowered when the auctions failed, he said.
Mittal said that there is enough spectrum with the operators now going through consolidation so there was no real pressure to buy expensive spectrum . "My prediction is that there won't be an auction in 2017-18. There was a time when we were clamouring for more spectrum. Not anymore," Mittal said.