Bidders are expected to spend thousands of crores on securing the airwaves in an auction that will kick off on 26 July. The four companies can opt out of the auction by 19 July, and the telecom department will publish the final list on 20 July.
According to details issued by the department on Tuesday, Adani Data Networks was issued a letter of intent on 28 June for the grant of a unified licence with authorization of national long distance and international long distance for pan-India service, and internet service for the Gujarat circle.
The company will seek a unified licence for access services in specific licence areas or circles in case it can secure spectrum in those circles in the auction, it said in a submission to the department.
Adani Data Networks has a net worth of ₹248 crore, while parent Adani Enterprises has a net worth of ₹4,731 crore, the declaration provided by Adani Group showed. The group has requested the government to consider parent Adani Enterprises’ net worth while scrutinizing its eligibility for participating in the spectrum auction.
In a statement on 9 July, Adani Group, however, had said the spectrum would be used for providing private network solutions across airports, ports, power generation and transmission, among its other businesses.
Among other applicants, Bharti Airtel declared that its net worth was ₹75,887 crore as of 31 March and paid-up capital of ₹2,795 crore. Reliance Jio Infocomm’s net worth was ₹1.97 trillion, and paid-up capital was ₹1.54 trillion. Vodafone Idea declared it had a negative net worth of ₹80,918 crore with a paid-up capital of ₹32,119 crore.
DoT will announce pre-qualification of the bidders on 18 July, when it will also provide eligibility points based on the earnest money deposited by the bidders. Given that flexibility has been provided in the auction rules for bidders to bid across licence areas in any of the bands, the government has advised applicants to deposit sufficient earnest money to enable them to switch among circles during the auction.
“Bidders who make smaller earnest money deposits (EMD) will result in corresponding lower levels of initial eligibility. Thus it would be a combination of the EMD of the number of blocks in the selected LSAs (licensed service areas) in each of the bands and the eligibility points at that particular round, which would decide the ability to submit the bid for the respective bidder," the government said in the notice inviting applications for the auctions.
According to analysts, a higher earnest money deposit would also determine whether the company will bid for select circles or pan-India licenses. “Based on EMD, it will be clear whether it will limit its participation to select circles out of 22 circles, which should be enough to create private network solutions. Aggressive participation across a higher number of circles remains a key risk," analysts at Motilal Oswal Securities Ltd said in a note.
