NEW DELHI: The auction for Bandwidth Access (BWA) began to pick up to an extent on the third day today by registering a Pan-India total of Rs 41.84 billion against the base price of Rs 17.5 billion.
Six service centres – Delhi, Mumbai, rest of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu – closed their bids on the third day after sixteen rounds with Rs 4.53 billion. Gujarat had a bid of Rs 4.48 billion.
Kolkata and Punjab had bids of Rs 1.96 billion each, while Kerala had a bid of Rs 1.23 billion. West Uttar Pradesh at Rs 987.1 million, east Uttar Pradesh at Rs 702.3 million and Madhya Pradesh at Rs 655.8 million.
Haryana, Rajasthan, and West Bengal continued to have bids of Rs 600 million each while the service centres of Himachal Pradesh, Assam, North-east, and Jammu and Kashmir had bids of Rs 150 million each for the third day today. Bihar had a bid of Rs 162.1 million and Orissa had a bid of Rs 151.5 million.
Haryana, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Orissa, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, and North-East will not see much change with no applications for price increment for tomorrow’s rounds.
The telecom operators in the race are Aircel, Augere (Mauritius) Limited, Bharti Airtel, Infotel Broadband Services Private Limited, Qualcomm Incorporated, Reliance WiMax Limited, Spice Internet Service, Provider Private Limited, Tata Communications Internet Services Limited, Tikona Digital Networks Private Limited and Vodafone Essar Limited.
The successful bidders would be allowed to start commercial operations from 1 September.