India’s 5G spectrum auction has ended, 91mobiles reported today.
On June 16 of this year, India officially approved the 5G spectrum auction, which is scheduled to be held at the end of July. India’s telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said at the time that 5G commercial services would be launched as soon as possible after the successful auction of 5G spectrum, which is expected to be in August or September this year.
The auction is for 72097.85 MHz of spectrum valid for 20 years. It includes the 600 MHz, 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz, 3300 MHz and 26 GHz bands. The auction was conducted by three operators – Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea – and Gautam Adani, an Indian tycoon.
The auction was so intense that it lasted for several days and rounds of bidding. After 40 rounds of bidding, the auction finally ended with the Indian government receiving a total of INR 15.6 trillion (approximately Rs. 1.33 trillion) in bids. Reliance Jio was the highest bidder in the auction for the 700MHz band, winning the band with the best call quality and network performance.
All three Indian providers are now poised to launch 5G networks by the end of this year, with Bharti Airtel having already announced partnerships with Samsung, Nokia and Ericsson, and starting 5G network deployments this month.
In addition, India’s telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in an interview that the Indian government held a meeting to approve spectrum allocation after the auction ended, and operators are expected to be able to allocate spectrum by Aug. 10. So India should be able to launch 5G networks in tier 1 cities in October and expand to other regions next year.
