The Department of Telecommunications has delayed the opening of invites for the agency which will decide e-auction of spectrum for 3G and Broadband Wireless Access (BWA).

The opening of bids has been deferred to September 22 from September 3 as decided earlier. The pre-bid conference, which was to be held on August 27, has also been re-scheduled to September 8.

However, according to the revised schedule issued by the communications ministry, there will be no delay in the date of identifying the agency. The finalisation of the bids will be completed by September 30 as announced earlier by Telecom Secretary Siddhartha Behura.

The request for proposal for the agency was floated on August 14 in order to select an agency for e-auction of spectrum for 3G and BWA in 22 telecom service areas in the country.

The opening of covering letter and selection of bidders, who meet the eligibility criteria, will now be held on September 22. Qualified bidders will make presentations on September 24 and the government will also open technical bids on this date. The financial bids of technically-qualified bidders will open on September 26, instead of September 19.

However, in accordance with the recent decision taken by the Telecom Commission, an auction will be held for 3G mobile communications using the CDMA technology platform rather than basing the allocation on the subscriber base criteria for the 800-MHz band.

"The same auctioneer will oversee the e-auction of the 3G spectrum for CDMA players as well, so it is up to the auctioneer to decide with the rest of the players when the bidding for the 3G spectrum will take place and how much spectrum will be allocated for auction," Behura told Business Standard.

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