TRAI says 3G auction bidding 'sensible'

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The 3G auction has ended today as the all-India licence was last bid for Rs 16,751 crore. After the 34 days of hectic auction and 184 rounds of bidding, the government has garnered revenue worth Rs 67,719 crore. 

As analyst and experts argue on the auction, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Chairman JS Sarma says there was not any insensible bidding.

He adds, "The telecom companies knew why they were bidding at that price. We should respect the market discovered price. We do not think there was any insensible bidding. It would be interesting to watch the packages offered by the telcos."

Sarma says that it is too early to react to pricing of voice and data tariffs. However, he says, the competition in voice tariff will continue. He adds further that TRAI would not like to intervene in tariff unless required.

Here is a verbatim transcript of Sarma with CNBC-TV18. For more details watch the accompanying video.

One of the key points that has emerged is the fact that the operators seem to have focused on specific circles and have therefore instead of going all out to take a all India footprint, no operator has emerged as a single 3G operator so do you think from a regulatory point of view that the operators have been rational and sensible in the way they have gone about bidding for this auction?

A: I once again would like to repeat that they are always rational, they are always very sensible so I don't think there will be any insensible bidding at all. Its interesting to see that the prices in different circles is obviously different and some of the circles have actually brought very high prices so it would be interesting to see the kind of packages that they bring in different areas.

One of the questions really that perhaps emerges as a consequence of the bids today is the fact that while the market has really discovered the value of spectrum in a most transparent manner for the first time in telecom's history in India. There is some concern in some analyst with regard to what will happen to tariffs going forward, the fact that in order to recover and achieve break even on the investments that they operators will make both on the spectrum as well as the capex may see some upward pressure on tariff rates and while the TRAI has all along maintained a market friendly forbearance policy, do you think there is time to revisit and do you expect that there will be upward pressure on the 3G call rates both for voice as well as data?

Well this is frankly too early to really react on this or even to be specific about the prices. The only thing that I can say is that first of all there are only three or in some circles there are four operators who have 3G. there are many other operators who do not have so to that extent the competition in terms of voice will continue to be maintained, and so far as 3G services are concerned ---this is the first time that is really being introduced in a big way in India, so far only BSNL and MTNL have being doing it but we require to wait and watch as to how the prices of the 3G services proceed, as far as TRAI is concerned we will continue to keep track of the prices at this stage I don't want to say whether forbearance will be continued or whether forbearance will not be continued, I think frankly it is too premature to say anything on this the policy as it exists will continue unless there are reasons for why this particular policy should be changed as of now I don't see any change in the policy.

For complete interview watch the videos.