India 3G airwave race gathers pace, bids in April

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New revenue stream

India's top three mobile operators Bharti, Reliance Communications and Vodafone Essar separately said on Thursday they had submitted applications to bid for the 3G airwaves for all of India's 22 telecoms zones.

Abu Dhabi-based Etisalat, which has a telecoms joint venture in India, also said it had applied for the 3G spectrum bid, while two sources told Reuters that Tata Teleservices, India's fifth-ranked mobile firm and 26 percent owned by NTT DoCoMo, submitted its interest to bid on Thursday.

Vodafone Essar has also expressed interest in BWA spectrum, the company said.

US-based chipmaker Qualcomm said on Wednesday it had applied to bid in the BWA auction to help it deploy fourth-generation long-term evolution technology (LTE) in India.

The long-delayed auctions open up a new revenue stream for mobile operators in the world's fastest-growing mobile market as a vicious price war has pushed voice call charges sharply lower, hurting their margins.

Bidding for 3G would start from a government-fixed base price of Rs 35 billion (USD 770 million) for all-India radio waves, but analysts expect each winner to spend between USD 1 billion and USD 1.5 billion due to the huge demand for scarce spectrum and cut-throat competition.

For all-India BWA spectrum, the base price is Rs 17.5 billion. The government has pencilled in its budget for revenues of Rs 350 billion (USD 7.7 billion) from the auctions.