India’s imminent 3G license auctions could face further delay following a move by India’s Finance Ministry to significantly increase the base price for the licenses. According to reports, the Ministry is looking to double the reserve price for a nationwide 3G license from around US$412 million currently to close to US$1 billion. The intervention of the Ministry could force India’s Department of Telecom (DoT) to delay the launch of the auction for the second time in as many weeks, and it may now need to resubmit its auction proposal to the Indian government. Last week, the DoT announced that the auctions – originally scheduled to begin on 16 January – had been postponed until 30 January. This delay was reportedly designed to give international operators more time to finalise bids. Under the terms of the auction, international operators must partner with local Indian firms as the level of foreign investment in the licensee company is capped at 74 percent.

Last month, the DoT published its breakdown of how 3G spectrum will be allocated across India’s various telecoms circles. State-owned mobile operators BSNL and MTNL have been reserved one block of 2x5MHz in each circle (with the exception of Rajasthan, which will have no 3G spectrum available at all), but the number of blocks of spectrum available in the private auction differs depending on the circle. All 3G spectrum will be in the 2.1GHz frequency band while a separate auction for so-called ‘Broadband Wireless Access’ (BWA) spectrum will take place in the 2.3GHz and 2.5GHz bands, which is deemed suitable for WiMAX. In separate news, Indian mobile operator Reliance Communications (RCom) said it will switch on its nationwide GSM network this week, making it available to around 1 billion people. The new network is set to run in parallel with its existing CDMA network. Rival Indian CDMA operator, Tata Teleservices, also announced today it is to launch GSM services soon.