India's biggest auction of telecom spectrum ended on a whimper today with just Rs 65,789 crore of bids coming in over five days against an expectation of Rs 5.6 lakh crore, leaving nearly 60 per cent of airwaves, including premium 4G bands, unsold.
UK-based Vodafone's India unit was the most aggressive, taking home Rs 20,000 crore worth of spectrum. Bharti Airtel, the nation's biggest telecom company, bought Rs 14,244 crore worth of spectrum, while Idea Cellular put in Rs 12,798 crore of bids.
Newcomer Reliance Jio is believed to have spent Rs 13,500 crore on spectrum buying.
Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha said bids were received for 964.80 MHz of spectrum out of 2,354.55 MHz across seven bands put on offer.
"The total upfront payment to the government is about Rs 32,000 crore which is the highest in the last five years. Wherever operators wanted to improve their data services, they participated. Total, we could sell 964.80 MHz of spectrum," Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha told reporters here
Asked if he was disappointed with the muted response, Sinha said he was happy with fact that the government will get the highest upfront payment received in the last five years.
Premium 700 MHz and 900 MHz spectrum found no takers, mainly because of high reserve or auction start price set by the government.
While Airtel acquired 173.8 Mhz spectrum across 1800/2100/2300 MHz bands, Idea Cellular won 2100 Mhz band spectrum in Mumbai circle.
Reliance Jio official did not disclose the amount the company put in the auction and only said "the government process is not yet complete.
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