The inter-ministerial Telecom Commission (TC) will meet on April 30 to discuss further plans for the upcoming spectrum auctions that will take place in July. The government plans to auction all the major bands, including premium airwaves such as 700MHz.

Government sources told BusinessLine that the Commission, headed by Department of Telecom (DoT) Secretary JS Deepak, will not only discuss spectrum base price, usage charge and other subjects, but also Defence bands, which the government is likely to get around 202 MHz of spectrum in the 1,800 MHz band.

The DoT is likely to get the defence bands due to harmonisation of airwaves by early next month.

“The government this time wants to free up maximum number of bands so that they can be put in the auction. The Telecom Minister (Ravi Shankar Prasad) since his first day in office has been trying to vacate as much spectrum so that consumers can benefit in future,” a government official said requesting anonymity.

The DoT has also made available 15 MHz of spectrum in the 3G band of 2100 MHz by swapping of an equal amount of spectrum to the Defence in the 1900 MHz band. For the upcoming auctions also, the government has decided to offer bands such as 700MHz and 2500MHz for the first time, apart from 800 MHz, 900 Mhz, 1,800 MHz, 2,100 MHz and 2,300 MHz bands that could fetch the exchequer more than ₹5 lakh crore.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) , in its recommendations, has put a base price of ₹11,485 crore per megahertz for the 700 Mhz premium band, to which the TC in its meeting on March 28, had sought clarification on various issues such as pricing of the 700MHz and spectrum usage charge (SUC).

However, the TRAI on Monday said that 700 MHz band should be auctioned in the upcoming auctions as non-utilisation of such spectrum would result in losses to the government.

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