Reliance will give company to Bharti, Vodafone for pan-India spectrum bids

New Delhi: If reports of earnest money deposits made by telecom companies today for upcoming spectrum auctions are correct, only three players will be bidding for 5 mhz spectrum each in the two spectrum bands. These are Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Reliance Jio. It is interesting to note that Reliance Jio has emerged as a serious challenge to incumbent big daddies Bharti and Vodafone.

If the EMD figures are correct, because apart from the two established players, Reliance Jio will be the only company to become eligible for bidding for spectrum in 1800 and 900 mhz bands in all of India’s 22 telecom circles. Spectrum is being auctioned in these two bands early next month and Reliance Jio is being seen as the biggest disrupter this time.[caption id=“attachment_1346095” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Spectrum auction time. Reuters[/caption]

The company has pan-India 4G spectrum already but has not begun services. It is widely expected to offer voice and high speed data services later this year, after acquiring additional spectrum through the February auctions.

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Though the EMD amounts give an indication of intent of telecom companies to bid, these amounts do not indicate any actual revenue generation the government may do during the auctions. As one potential bidder explained “EMD is merely a bank guarantee, no money or even cheque is deposited with the government. So as of now, it is not possible to judge whether the little over Rs 11,000 crore revenue generation target the government has set itself from these spectrum auctions will be met”.

A story on the Business Standard website quotes EMD deposits by various companies as follows:

Bharti: Rs 3,700 crore

Vodafone: Rs 2,800 crore

Reliance Jio: Rs 2,600 crore

Idea Cellular: Rs 1,565 crore

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Telewings: Rs 330 crore

For any telco to bid for 5mhz of both kinds of spectrum in the auctions on a pan-India basis, a little over Rs 2300 crore EMD was required. Which is why we can safely say that Idea and Telewings will not be interested in all circles for 1800 mhz and perhaps not even all the three circles where 900 mhz is being put up for auction.

Some things now become clear about the upcoming auctions:

1. Reliance Jio will, in all probability, bid for all three circles for 900 mhz spectrum

2. Only two bidders can succeed in getting 900 mhz spectrum in Kolkata since only 14 mhz is being put up for auction and 5 mhz is the minimum a player must bid for. In Delhi and Mumbai though, three players may successfully bid for this spectrum since 16 mhz each is available.

3. Reliance may be in direct competition with Bharti and Vodafone in the Delhi and additionally with Idea in the Mumbai circles for 900 mhz.

The BS story says Telewings is expected to bid for ten new circles but stay away from high value teledensity circles like Mumbai, Delhi, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu among others. The same story says Reliance Communications is expected to only go for additional spectrum in circles where it currently does not have 5 Mhz in the 1800 Mhz band but only 4.4 Mhz.

Disclosure: The Reliance Group has funded the promoter of Network18, which publishes Firstpost