Despite getting lukewarm response from the earlier two auctions, the government on Monday said it is confident of meeting the revenue target of Rs 40,000 crore (Rs 400 billion) from spectrum sale this fiscal.
Today is the last date for submitting the applications and companies have the option to withdraw them by January 27.
The government has set a total revenue target of Rs 40,874.5 crore (Rs 408.74 billion) this fiscal from spectrum, including auction amount, one-time spectrum charge and annual regular licence fee.
Eight telecom companies, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, the biggest three in the country, bid a combined Rs 61,162 crore (Rs 611.62 billion) in the spectrum auction held earlier this month.
Telecom companies have put in bids worth Rs 58,332 crore (Rs 583.32 billion) in spectrum auction at the end of 49 rounds on the 7th day of bidding on Monday.
The auction started off with the 36th round this morning. At the end of 35 rounds on Friday, bids worth around Rs 54,600 crore had been received by the government.
Since August 2013, FIPB has approved two FDI proposals in the telecom sector.
At present MTNL and BSNL do not impose roaming charges for mobile internet services on each others customers.
Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance Jio Infocomm and five other telecom firms will battle it out at the spectrum auction tomorrow, from which the government expects to garner at least Rs 11,300 crore (Rs 113 billion).
Rationalisation of reserve prices in the ongoing spectrum auction helped the government to get Rs 40,000 crore of bids on the opening day.
After a two year run-in with controversies, telecom sector now looks stable and seems back on its feet with initial investment proposal of over Rs 11,000 crore (Rs 110 billion) received in 2013.
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