It's too soon to talk about 2G auction, says Bharti Airtel

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It's too soon to talk about 2G auction, says Bharti Airtel

Bharti Airtel is yet to decide if it will participate in the next round of 2G bidding, said Sanjay Kapoor, CEO of the telco while announcing the December quarter earnings today.

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Bharti Airtel is yet to decide if it will participate in the next round of 2G bidding, said Sanjay Kapoor, CEO of the telco while announcing the December quarter earnings today.

"We will take a call on bidding for the 2G spectrum once the announcement comes out," he said. He further said 2G auction is a hypothetical situation as spectrum pricing is likely to be market determined.

Asserting that Bharti  is a strong believer of market mechanism, the company said it was confused by the pre-determined nature of tariffs while spectrum was being auctioned at high price.

It may be recalled that the Supreme Court has cancelled 122 second generation (2G) licences granted to eight telecom companies in 2008, hence the Department of Telecom (Dot) in consultation with Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), will soon announce the reserve price for auction of 2G spectrum.

Though Kapoor said that talking about 2G spectrum too soon is not fair, there are media reports suggesting that many telecom company chiefs recently met telecom minister Kapil Sibbal to push for auction to buy 2G spectrum.

Reports also state that the operators objected to the proposal to pay a one-time fee for holding more than 6.2 megahertz (MHz) of spectrum in mobile circles with retrospective effect. These operators argued with the telecom minister that they were already paying a high spectrum use charge. Any suggestion to levy an additional one-time fee on the same spectrum would be akin to double taxation.

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