India broadband auction attracts bid of $884m on third day

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: A total of 41.8 billion rupees ($884 million) bids have been received by the Indian government on the third day of an auction for licenses to offer faster wireless broadband for computers nationwide.

Qualcomm Inc. which is the world’s biggest maker of mobile-phone chips, and Vodafone Group Plc, the largest mobile carrier by sales are in the race along with nine other companies. A company would have to win bids in all 22 zones in order to ensure nationwide spectrum. 509.7 billion rupees ($11 billion) for licenses to offer third-generation mobile-phone services have been bid by the nine companies last week. However, none of the telecom operators were successful in acquiring the rights to national 3G coverage by winning licenses in all 22 regions up for auction, not even Bharti Airtel Ltd., India’s biggest wireless operator, and Vodafone.

34 percent rise in the closing bids for licenses to offer broadband wireless in the entire nation’s service zones has been noticed by the Department of telecommunication, which went up from the base price of 17.5 billion rupees set by the government initially. Daily updates are issued by the telecommunications department on bidding and all data collected from bidders will be made public after the auction is over.