The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has issued a consultation paper on “Valuation and Reserve price of spectrum: Licences expiring in 2015-16”. The consultation paper invites industry stakeholders’ views on the issues pertaining to contiguity of spectrum, the block size, valuation and reserve price of spectrum in 900 MHz and 1800 MHz spectrum bands. This comes after the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had sought recommendations from the regulator for the same in April 2014.

The consultation process will determine the reserve price of spectrum to be auctioned across 18 out of the 22 telecom service areas across the country, used for providing GSM mobile services based. TRAI has further stated that 184 MHz of spectrum in 900 MHz band and 104 MHz in 1,800 MHz band is likely to be put up for the auction.

In December 2015, four licences of Bharti Airtel, seven of Idea Cellular, seven of Reliance Communications and six of Vodafone India will expire. For continuing their mobile services, the operators will be required to buy spectrum again through auctions.

The last date for receiving comments from stakeholders is September 8, 2014 while the last date for receiving counter comments is September 15, 2014. After this, TRAI will hold open house discussions on September 22, 2014 to discuss the subject in details.