5G spectrum sale: Reliance Jio top bidder, Bharti Airtel on second spot

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio has emerged as the top bidder in the 5G spectrum auction that went on for seven days, and ended on Monday. The provisional sale of airwaves amounted to Rs 1,50,173 crore. 

This mop is double of the 4G airwaves worth Rs 77,815 crore sold last year and triple of 3G auction in 2010 that fetched Rs 50,968.37 crore. 

Reliance Jio was the top bidder, followed by Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, according to a report in news agency PTI. Gautam Adani’s Adani Data Networks is the latest entrant in the telecom space.  

Jio and Airtel are expected to have built a pan-India 5G spectrum footprint, while Vodafone Idea participated in select circles. 

The details of the 5G spectrum sale will be fully known once the data is compiled. 

The government put the spectrum on offer in 10 bands but received no bids in three. In the previous auction in 2021 that lasted two days, Reliance Jio picked up spectrum worth Rs 57,122.65 crore, Bharti Airtel bid about Rs 18,699 crore, and Vodafone Idea bought spectrum worth Rs 1,993.40 crore. This year, a total of 72 GHz (gigahertz) of radiowaves worth at least Rs 4.3 lakh crore was put on the block.

In addition to powering ultra-low latency connections, which allow downloading full-length high-quality video or movie to a mobile device in a matter of seconds (even in crowded areas), Fifth Generation or 5G would enable solutions such as e-health, connected vehicles, more-immersive augmented reality and metaverse experiences, life-saving use cases, and advanced mobile cloud gaming among others.

(With PTI inputs)

Also read: 5G spectrum auction ends; provisional sale of airwaves at Rs 1.5 lakh cr