Bharti queers the GSM pitch with Rs2,650 crore offer for pan-India spectrum

11 December 2007

Mumbai: Sunil Mittal's Bharti Airtel has offered to pay the government Rs2,650 crore for an additional spectrum of 4.4 MHz across 23 telecom circles in the country and told the government that the company was willing to participate in an auction for scarce spectrum.

Bharti's offer of Rs2,650 crore as the initial bid amount for 4.4 MHz of pan-India GSM spectrum is Rs1,000 crore higher than what the government has asked Reliance Communications to pay for country-wide GSM licence.

“Considering the urgency of the matter for us to attend to the quality of network needs of the customers and the massive future growth, we herewith offer a sum of Rs 2,650 crore. Furthermore, we would like to reserve the right to increase this bid in the event of an auction for such a pan-Indian GSM spectrum allocation and further this may be taken as our initial bid for the pan-India spectrum,“ Akhil Gupta, joint managing director of Bharti Group, said in a letter to the department of telecommunications.

Industry sources indicated that other GSM operators and new players in favour of auction may put in counter bids over the next few days, which could force the government to take a re-look at the option to auction spectrum instead of allocating it based on the number of subscribers.

While the communications ministry seems to be in no mood to relax the subscriber-linked spectrum allocation criteria any further, external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee, who heads a group of ministers looking into release of spectrum, said the government expects to release extra spectrum available with the armed forces.

"No timeframe has been set... As you know there are some court cases coming up either tomorrow or very soon. This is engaging our attention and we will take a decision as soon as possible," he said on the sidelines of a function.