The empowered group of ministers (EGoM) on telecom, paving way for big ticket mergers and consolidation in the telecom sector has approved the 'mergers and acquisitions’ (M&A) guidelines and allowed an entity formed by merger between two or more mobile service providers to hold up to 50 percent of the market share in a circle.
Under the new guidelines, an operator will be entitled to only one block of spectrum which had been allotted at an administrative price or without an auction process. The merged entity would need to pay the market price for any additional bandwidth beyond that one block that means if a dual-technology holder acquires a single technology operator or a single technology operator acquires a dual-technology holder, the resultant entity would eventually have three blocks of spectrum and would have to pay a market price for two blocks. The government has also decided to allow a merged entity to hold up to two blocks of 3G and broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum as against one block each currently
The empowered group of ministers, headed by finance minister P Chidambaram also decided that a total of 403 Mhz of spectrum worth Rs 36,000 crore be auctioned in the 1800 Mhz band in the auctions scheduled for January. All these decision would now be forwarded to the Cabinet for final approval.
Under the new guidelines, an operator will be entitled to only one block of spectrum which had been allotted at an administrative price or without an auction process. The merged entity would need to pay the market price for any additional bandwidth beyond that one block that means if a dual-technology holder acquires a single technology operator or a single technology operator acquires a dual-technology holder, the resultant entity would eventually have three blocks of spectrum and would have to pay a market price for two blocks. The government has also decided to allow a merged entity to hold up to two blocks of 3G and broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum as against one block each currently
The empowered group of ministers, headed by finance minister P Chidambaram also decided that a total of 403 Mhz of spectrum worth Rs 36,000 crore be auctioned in the 1800 Mhz band in the auctions scheduled for January. All these decision would now be forwarded to the Cabinet for final approval.
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