(2 June 2010 9:15 pm)

NEW DELHI: Even as the Communications and Information Technology Ministry declared that the activity requirement will be set to 90 per cent in Clock Round 65, the auction for Bandwidth Access (BWA) registered a Pan-India total of Rs 86.04 billion, just a little short of five times the base price of Rs 17.5 billion.

With the bidding remained confined to some of the main service centres with other bids remaining unchanged at the end of round 62 on the eighth day, the bids for Delhi and Mumbai touched Rs 13.05 billion each.

The bids for Karnataka, Kerala, West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, North-East, and Jammu and Kashmir remained unchanged.

Twelve service centres – the rest of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, East Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, and North-East - will not see much change with no applications for price increment for tomorrow’s rounds.

The telecom operators in the race are Aircel, Augere (Mauritius) Limited, Bharti Airtel, Infotel Broadband Services Private Limited, Qualcomm Incorporated, Reliance WiMax Limited, Spice Internet Service, Provider Private Limited, Tata Communications Internet Services Limited, Tikona Digital Networks Private Limited and Vodafone Essar Limited.

The successful bidders would be allowed to start commercial operations from 1 September.