Jio top bidder as government nets Rs 1.5L cr from 5G sale

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A record over Rs 1.5 lakh crore worth of 5G telecom spectrum was sold in a seven-day auction ending on Monday, which saw billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Jio emerging as the top bidder to consolidate its leadership position.

Sources with direct knowledge of the matter said provisional data puts the total bids at Rs 1,50,173 crore. The mop-up from the 5G spectrum, capable of offering ultra-high speed mobile internet connectivity, is almost double at Rs 77,815 crore worth of 4G airwaves sold last year.

Reliance Jio was the top bidder to the airwaves capable of offering speeds about 10 times faster than 4G, lag-free connectivity, and can enable billions of connected devices to share data in real-time. It was followed by Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea Ltd.

New entrant Adani group is said to have bought 26 Mhz spectrum for setting up a private telecom network.

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The sources said details of which company bought how much spectrum would be known once the data from the auction is fully compiled. Both Bharti and Jio have likely built a pan-India spectrum footprint for 5G, with Vodafone Idea's selective participation.

The government had put on offer spectrum in 10 bands but received no bids for airwaves in 600 MHz, 800 MHz and 2,300 MHz bands. About two-thirds of the bids were for the 5G bands (3,300 Mhz and 26 GHz), while more than a quarter of the demand came in the 700 Mhz band - a band that had gone unsold in the previous two auctions (2016 and 2021).

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