The S&P BSE Sensex ended 80 points up at 23,789 while the Nifty50 closed at 7,235, up 24 points.
A crown of thorns awaits the next telecom minister at Sanchar Bhawan as the new incumbent will have to address a host of tricky issues like industry infighting, tariffs and improving financial health of the Rs 2.3 lakh crore industry.
Telecom operator Vodafone has been the top gainer of customers through mobile number portability facility while Reliance Communications is the biggest loser.
The country's wireless subscriber base fell to 87.05 crore at the end of September, registering the first drop in five months, after Reliance Communications deactivated services of over 1 crore "unprofitable" users.
At Rs 2,685 crore for 1MHz pan-Indian spectrum, reserve price would be 52% higher than that of 1,800MHz band
DoT had raised the demand on December 22 and asked RCom to pay within a month.
Access spectrum is airwaves used for transmitting wireless signals on mobile devices from mobile towers.
Mobile phone service providers alone jointly reported gross revenue of Rs 55,164.18 crore (RS 551.64 billion).
The government has suffered a loss of Rs 12,488.93 crore (Rs 124.88 billion) due to under-invoicing of gross revenue by six telecom companies including Reliance Communications, Vodafone and Bharti Airtel, the CAG said in a damning report on Friday.
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.
In effect, companies which put their money in telecom in India would have done much better to keep the cash in bank and earn interest.
The telecom spectrum auction entered the 33rd round of bidding today after starting off from the Rs 52,689 crore (Rs 526. 89 billion) mark this morning.
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.
Govt is set to garner Rs 1 lakh crore from sale of radiowaves.
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).
Jio's disruptive strategy, including free voice services and data at throwaway rates, apart from offering all services free for six months, triggered a consolidation in the telecom sector.
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