Bureaucratic drama: India wants to double 3G license prices
Just as carriers (and would-be carriers) were likely scraping up the necessary 20 billion rupees to plunk down for a national 3G license over in India, the government wants to switch things up double down. The country's Finance Ministry has apparently asked the Department of Telecom to ask for some 40 billion rupees as a minimum bid price now -- that's about $840 million for those who don't have the Indian rupee-to-American dollar conversion table memorized -- which would automatically require Cabinet and regulatory re-approval, ensuring a delay of the January 30 date that had been previously scheduled for bidding to begin. Confusingly, the Finance Ministry indicates the proposed change is a response to lukewarm demand for licenses from foreign, non-Indian companies; the thought is that doubling the minimum might force out some local players and reignite interest from some global wireless heavyweights. Weird how that works.[Via mocoNews]
Filed under: UMTS
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Abhishek @ Jan 5th 2009 12:39PM
P Chidambaram (Minister of Finance) has lost his damn mind! This is the lowest form of trading, and thus has a very Indian tinge to it.
Price something valuable and needed (to stay in the game) at a high-end price...just high-end enough for the big players or anyone who REALLY needs it, to scrape together whatever they can to make the payment, and then jack the price up right quick days before the deal's about to go down. By now, the carriers will have put several game plans in motion (ads, phones, contracts) so it would be a "loss of face" to back down.
I'm gonna follow this and see how it ends up.
ducky @ Jan 6th 2009 2:43AM
Augh. India needs to stop giving itself up to foreign companies. Let its own corporations have a chance at building infrastructure before handing control to a foreign company on a silver platter.
magicvash @ Jan 6th 2009 11:48AM
There's rumors that in Tamil Nadu in the south, the Chief Minister's niece received a huge bribel and the rights to sell the 3G license was given away for practically nothing to a handful of companies that the CM has a stake in who are then marking up and reselling the spectrum.