Govt collects Rs28,872 cr as upfront amount in telecom auction
11 Apr 2015
The government has collected Rs28,872 crore from telecom companies who have paid the entire upfront money to the government for the airwaves they acquired during last month's auction, reports said on Friday.
Tata Teleservices and Reliance Communications deposited the amount on Wednesday while others made the payments on Thursday, which was the last day to make the payments.
Many successful spectrum bidders, including Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, Vodafone and Idea Cellular had paid about Rs10,808 crore towards upfront payments till 31 March.
As per DoT, the upfront payment due to Idea was Rs7,772.2 crore, Airtel Rs7,832.20 crore, Vodafone Rs6,817.23 crore, Reliance Jio Rs2,591.76 crore, Tata Teleservices Rs2,013.33 crore, RCom Rs1,104.09 crore and Aircel Rs742.5 crore.
DoT officials said all the upfront money has been received, which would help the government meet its fiscal deficit target of 4.1 per cent for 2014-15.
The 19-day spectrum auction that ended on 25 March evoked good response from the industry and bids worth Rs1,09,874.91 crore were received from seven companies.
As per the final results, Idea made total commitment of Rs30,306.98 crore followed by Airtel at Rs29,130.20 crore, Vodafone Rs29,959.74 crore, Reliance Jio Infocomm Rs10,077.53 crore, Reliance Communication Rs4,299.13 crore, Tata Teleservices Rs7,851.33 crore and Aircel Rs2,250 crore.
Meanwhile, India's most successful spectrum auction – which ended roughly two weeks ago, is likely to have a major impact on the telecom sector – both in terms of tariffs and viability of telecom companies.
The huge outgo may force bigger players to rethink their business model as margins shrink while the smaller ones will have to rebuild again.
