Spectrum auctions: Govt hopes to garner a modest Rs 30,000 crore

The government doesn’t seem to be very optimistic about getting high receipts from spectrum auctions, including 5G, which it plans to hold later this year. Going by the telecom revenue it expects to garner during the current financial year, auction receipts seem to be around only `30,000 crore, which means in terms of actual upfront payment, it will get only around `10,000 crore.

This will be much lower than revenues of `65,789 crore (upfront payment: `32,434 crore) it got in 2016 auctions and `1.09 lakh crore (upfront payment: `28,872 crore) in 2015.

The expectation is sharply lower than the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai) recommended reserve price for about 8,644 MHz of spectrum in different bands at `4.9 lakh crore.