The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India will give the recommendations on spectrum auction before April 15, 2012 its chairman J.S. Sarma said on Wednesday.
“We should be able to give recommendation on this (auction of spectrum) before April 15,” Mr. Sarma told reporters in New Delhi.
The recommendations are expected to give guidance on key issues including base price of spectrum, amount of spectrum that should be allocated to a bidder and eligible participants.
“I think by next week, we should be giving out recommendations for Unified Licence,” he said.
In the recommendations, the telecom regulator is expected to give out detailed guidelines on unified licences that will be issued to all telecom companies in future and will be delinked from spectrum.
TRAI, in its draft guidelines on unified licences, has proposed a fee of Rs. 20 crore for a national-level unified licence under the new regime.
Under the new regime, it is proposed that there would be only four types of licences as against many across the communications sector at present.
TRAI had issued consultation paper on auction of spectrum on March 7, 2012.
In this paper, the regulator had sought industry views on a host of topics like the amount of spectrum to be auctioned, liberalisation and reforming of spectrum in 800/900 MHz bands, structure of auction and eligibility criteria for participation. Spectrum block size, reserve price, roll-out obligations, spectrum usage charges and trading were the other issues.
