Ahead of their participation in 5G auction, the country’s leading telco Reliance Jio Infocomm has submitted earnest money deposit (EMD) of Rs 14,000 crore, and Bharti Airtel has put in Rs 5,500 crore.
Vodafone Idea, which is the third major player in the country’s telecom sector, has submitted Rs 2,200 crore as EMD.
According to the list of pre-qualified bidders posted on the telecom department’s website, the EMD amount of Adani Data Networks stands at Rs 100 crore.
Typically, EMD amounts give a broad indication of players’ appetite, strategy and plan for picking up spectrum in an auction. It also determines the eligibility points, through which telcos target specific amount of spectrum in a given circle.
With its EMD at Rs 14,000 crore, the eligibility points assigned to Jio for the auction stand at 1,59,830, the highest in the list of four bidders.
The eligibility points allocated to Airtel are 66,330, while that of Vodafone Idea are 29,370.
Adani Data Networks received eligibility points of 1,650, based on its deposit. The 5G spectrum auction is scheduled to start on July 26.
Total 72 GHz (gigahertz) of spectrum worth at least Rs 4.3 lakh crore will be put on the block during the auction.
The auction will be held for radiowaves in various low frequency bands (600 MHz, 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz), mid (3300 megahertz) and high frequency bands (26GHz).
All the above participants have paid Rs 1,00,000 as the application fee for the auction, that is scheduled to start from July 26.
