Delhi, Mar 3: All of us have noticed that some telecom operators connect better than some others. How does that happen? Mainly, it is because of two things:
A. The amount of spectrum that the company has
B. The infrastructure / equipment that the company has. The spectrum or bandwidth is owned by the government and is given to the highest bidder, using an auction method.
We bring you a quick update on who picked up what, and why.
Reliance emerged as the largest bidder. They bought the right to use the spectrum in all 22 circles (a circle is a geographical area) at 57,122 crores. Of this, 19,940 crores will be paid to the government immediately, while the rest will be paid over an eighteen-year period.
Airtel spent 18,700 crores, while Vodafone spent 1,990 crores.
The government expected to get about 45,000 crores from the auction, but after a two-day process, it ended up getting a whopping 77,814 crores!
The last time telecom companies were able to buy spectrum was in 2016.
As you can imagine, if a telecom company does not have spectrum, it will not be able to provide fast and reliable services to its customers, since it depends on the spectrum for its entire data transfer.
Since 2016, the number of users has exploded, but the spectrum has remained the same.
What have they bought the spectrum for?
Here is what we know:
| Reliance | Airtel | Vodafone | |
| Amount spent | 57,122 crores | 18,700 crores | 1990 crores |
| Spectrum bought | 488.3 MHz | 355.45 MHz | 11.8 MHZ |
| No. of circles | 22 | Not known | 5 |
| What they will use it for | 5 G Rollout | Improve 4G, improve deep indoor coverage, give more coverage to villages, and prepare for 5G rollout | improve 4G |
