Airtel and Jio cough up Rs 2306.97 crore for immediate assignment of available unsold spectrum blocks

As a part of the frequency assignment, the Government has also accepted the request of two TSPs – M/S Bharti and M/S Reliance Jio, for assignment of immediately available unsold spectrum blocks in place of spectrum blocks in the same band and LSA assigned to them from later dates.

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By Basil Kannagi Arasu

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Telecom service providers Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio have coughed up a total of Rs. 2306.97 crore in order to immediate assignment of available unsold spectrum blocks in the place of spectrum blocks assigned to them in the same LSA and band that would have been available at a later date.

The Government has accepted the request of Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio at the expense of Airtel paying up Rs 157.38 crore and Jio paying up Rs 2149.59 crores. The payment has been received immediately by the Government rather than in August/September 2021.

As a part of the frequency assignment, the Government has also accepted the request of two TSPs – M/S Bharti and M/S Reliance Jio, for assignment of immediately available unsold spectrum blocks in place of spectrum blocks in the same band and LSA assigned to them from later dates. An amount of Rs. 2306.97 crore (Rs. 157.38 crore from M/s Bharti and Rs. 2149.59 crore from M/s Reliance Jio) has been received immediately by the Government, rather than in August/ September, 2021,” said DoT in a prepared statement.

DoT has today also completed the assignment of frequencies to successful bidders of the Spectrum Auction 2021. The frequency assignment accompanied by a frequency harmonization exercise carried across multiple bands and multiple circles.

As covered earlier by OnlyTech, the date of availability of spectrum blocks varied as per the frequency assignment during the Spectrum Auction 2021 delaying the assignment of spectrum blocks to as late as October 2021. DoT notably hasn’t yet revealed the finer details of the spectrum blocks that have been assigned to the duo in place of the earlier assigned spectrum blocks.

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Basil Kannagi Arasu

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Basil keeps an eye on the latest happenings in the Telecom sector. You can find him streaming the Premier League, which he started watching in 2013, in his free time.

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As a part of the frequency assignment, the Government has also accepted the request of two TSPs – M/S Bharti and M/S Reliance Jio, for assignment of immediately available unsold spectrum blocks in place of spectrum blocks in the same band and LSA assigned to them from later dates.

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12 thoughts on “Airtel and Jio cough up Rs 2306.97 crore for immediate assignment of available unsold spectrum blocks”

  1. Esmail bhai.

    does this hormonisation also affected bsnl and vi spectrum holding?

    what ever holding of bsnl and vi, which were supposed to get expire in aug-spe , specifically in 900mhz, must have got reallocated to airtel?

    Reply
    • Harmonization of spectrum is basically just shuffling of the spectral allotments of all operators such that all spectrum blocks held by them become contiguous. This exercise does not affect the spectrum expiry of any operator including BSNL and Vi, so their spectrum which is expiring in August September will still be in their possession until then. You might wonder that if these operators are not giving up their spectrum early then how are Jio and Airtel getting it earlier than expected? The answer to this lies in understanding how Dot decides upon spectrum allocation after the auction to the winners. Dot will always try to allot contiguous spectrum blocks to the operators instead of fragmented spectrum. So say Jio won a 5 MHz block in 1800 MHz band in the auction and Dot had a total of 10 MHz put up for sale, but from this only one 5 MHz block was contiguous and it belongs to Vi and will become available after its license expiry in September, and the remaining 5 MHz is immediately available but it is fragmented into a 2 MHz block and a 3 MHz block. In this case Dot will allocate the contiguous 5 MHz block to Jio and ask it to wait till September when Vi’s license expires so that Jio can use it for 4G as fragmented blocks are of no use for LTE.
      Now what Airtel and Jio did is that they compelled Dot to reshuffle all operators spectrum blocks and bring all the fragmented spectrum together such that the 2 MHz and 3 MHz chunks get combined to form a 5 MHz block which is immediately available, now in this case Dot would rather give Jio the immediately available 5 MHz block rather than making it wait till Vi’s license expires.

    • Yes, they will be allotted alternative blocks which were unsold instead of the ones which they were supposed to get but were going to be available late in July August.

    • Esmail Sir,
      Jio has won 5mhz in haryana and has renewed 5mhz in 850 band from its current holding. Will the early allocation result in a 10 mhz contigous holding or will these be two different blocks subject to combined with carrier aggregation ?

    • It will most definitely be a contiguous allotment and Jio will be able to use it as a single 10 MHz carrier. No need for CA.

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