By IANS,
New Delhi : An empowered group of ministers (EgoM) on telecom Thursday deferred a decision till next month on how to tackle court cases filed on the 2G auction and other related issues that could affect sale of spectrum.
The EGoM headed by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram met here but postponed a decision for a meeting to be held after Feb 4, sources said.
The Supreme Court is expected to hear the second generation (2G) spectrum case on Feb 4. The government feels that this may impact the auction process, including the reduction of price for the second round of auction.
On Jan 17, the union cabinet had approved cutting the reserve price for Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) spectrum used for mobile telephone services by 50 percent.
The EGoM on spectrum had asked the cabinet to take a final call on a 30-50 percent cut in the base price for airwaves in the 800 MHz band.
The new base price for CDMA airwaves will be around Rs.9,000 crore for five MHz of units of airwaves in the 800 MHz band on a pan-India basis.
The next round of spectrum auctions is likely to begin from March 11. The CDMA airwaves will be sold along with GSM airwaves in the 1800 MHz and 900 MHz bands.