Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday asked telecom service providers to gear up for 5G launch, post the issuance of spectrum allocation letters. In a first, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has issued spectrum assignment letters on the same day the successful bidders of radio waves made upfront payments.
“5G Update:Spectrum assignment letter issued. Requesting TSPs to prepare for 5G launch,” Vaishnaw wrote on a social media platform. The DoT has received payment of around ₹17,876 crore(US$2.24billion) from service providers — Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, Adani Data Networks and Vodafone Idea for spectrum they won in a recent auction.
The country’s biggest ever auction of telecom spectrum received a record ₹1.5-lakh crore worth of bids, with Mukesh Ambani’s Jio cornering nearly half of all the airwaves sold with a ₹87,946.93 crore bid. Bharti Enterprises founder and chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said that his company Bharti Airtel received a spectrum allocation letter within a few hours of making upfront payment to the DoT.
