IT and telecoms minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said today that India's next spectrum auction could commence in the last week of January. Originally planned for this year before being postponed due to Covid-19 lockdowns, the auction is expected to see Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtel and Jio Platforms compete for spectrum.
Prasad said: "Cabinet approves auction of spectrum in 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz and 2500 MHz frequency bands, for a validity period of 20 years. A total of 2251.25 MHz is being offered with total valuation of Rs. 3,92,332.70 crores."
The same conditions that applied to the last auction in 2016 will apply to the auction in 2021. Operators will have the option to pay an initial cost followed with up to 16 annual instalments.
On the equipment front, the government yesterday issued a national security directive on the telecom sector and Prasad said that to "maintain integrity of the supply chain security", the government will issue a list of "trusted sources".
Explaining the move to media, Prasad said: “Considering the need to ensure India’s national security, the cabinet has accorded approval for the national security directive on the telecom sector. Under the provisions of this directive, to maintain integrity of the supply chain security, the government will declare a list of trusted sources.”
The directive does not yet specify that Chinese-supplied network equipment must be replaced, however India has made several politically motivated moves this year to exclude China from its tech and telecoms industries. For example, since July it has banned more than 200 Chinese apps from the domestic market.
While Airtel and Idea are both known to have some Huawei kit, Jio has said its 5G network would be built indigenously.
The 5G economy
This week Jio became the first of India's mobile operators to commit to a H2, 2021 deadline for the introduction of 5G services. Airtel boss Sunil Mittal maintained that full roll out remains "two to three years" away.
Announcing a production linked incentive (PLI) scheme for telecom products with a 12,000 crore budget, Prasad said: "We want to unleash the potential of spectrum, remove bottlenecks, explore what new can be done with spectrum. We want to encourage wireline, internet base line, FTTH and FTTX connections. In the realm of 5G, we want to come out with meaningful applications”.
Supporting these developments, India is now looking to develop into a global hub for electronics manufacturing, including smart and connected devices which would accelerate the development of 5G.
Prasad said India's ambition is to produce "one billion mobile phones, 50 million smart TVs and 50 million products like laptops and tablets", in the next five years.
The third development saw RIL chairman and MD Mukesh Ambani appear alongside Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg during the social network's first Fuel for India 2020 forum.
The fully virtual event followed significant investments in India's digital landscape from both Facebook and WhatsApp this year, as well as a string of other investors.
Speaking during a keynote interview, the two discussed their ambitions for India's digitally enabled future and the 5G economy that will emerge as a result.
Ambani said: "Together with our platforms and the tools that we will provide to small businesses and to individual consumers, I believe will drive India to a five trillion economy and will make a much more equal India, with more equal wealth growth at the bottom of the pyramid.
"You know, Mark, I firmly believe that in the next two decades, India will grow to be among the top three economies in the world. But more importantly, it will become a premier digital society. It will be a modern society with young people driving it, with young businesses driving it…. And I think that Facebook, Jio, and a lot of other companies and entrepreneurs in the world, have a golden opportunity to be in India, to be part of this economic and social transformation, that we are witnessing and that will accelerate in the coming decades," he added.
Ambani cited figures claiming per capita income would increase from "$1,800 to $2,000 to $5,000 per capita", due to the introduction of new digital retail and communication tools.
However, the vision doesn’t yet have the buy in of everybody and these developments have emerged against a backdrop of widespread protests over agricultural reforms in recent days.
Last week Reliance Jio wrote to the regulator regarding a "large number" of port out requests from customers.
Dated 10 December, the letter to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), claimed the cancellation requests were filed after Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea '"created an impression" that Jio would benefit from the country's controversial agricultural reforms.
