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Contents
What is the News?
The Union Cabinet has approved a proposal of the Department of Telecommunications to conduct a spectrum auction through which spectrum will be assigned to the successful bidders for providing 5G services to the public and enterprises.
What is a Spectrum Auction?
What Spectrum bands will be auctioned?
The auction will be held for spectrum in various Low (600 MHz, 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz), Mid (3300 MHz) and High (26 GHz) frequency bands.
These spectrums will have a validity period of 20 years.
How will the Auction be conducted?
Initially, the bidders will have to submit an earnest money deposit ahead of the auction, on the basis of which each bidder will be allocated eligibility points. During the auction, the company will be able to place its bids using these eligibility points.
A mandatory requirement to make upfront payment by the successful bidders has been done away with for the first time.
Payments for spectrum can be made in 20 equal annual instalments to be paid in advance at the beginning of each year.
The bidders would also be given an option to surrender the spectrum after 10 years with no future liabilities with respect to balance instalments.
Moreover, the government will also not collect any spectrum usage charge on airwaves auctioned in this round and the requirement for bank guarantees and financial guarantees has also been done away with.
What are Private Captive Networks?
Captive networks are isolated networks in which a spectrum is assigned to enterprises to be utilized within a limited geographic area. Therefore, it is also referred to as a spectrum for localized or local use.
Cabinet has decided to enable the development and setting up of Private Captive Networks to spur a new wave of innovations in Industry 4.0 applications such as machine-to-machine communications, the Internet of Things (IoT), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) across automotive, healthcare, agriculture, energy and other sectors.
Source: The post is based on the article “Cabinet approves Auction of IMT/5G Spectrum” published in PIB on 15th June 2022.
