The Union Communications Minister, A Raja officially confirmed that the 3G auctions which were originally scheduled to be held in December this year have now been postponed to be conducted on January 2009.
"The 3G auction would be completed by January 15 and the operators would have to pay up by January 31.”
The Finance Ministry too had recently desired the auctions to be completed as soon as possible. Even the Minister had announced last week that the auctions will take place as announced earlier.
But yesterday’s development regarding delaying the 3G spectrum auctioning by about a month has made the wait for the services that much longer.
BSNL and MTNL however stand a chance to gain much required competitive head start over private operators for the launch of 3G services. The two PSUs have been guaranteed 3G spectrum.
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