India probing 4G license winners' rollouts

Dylan Bushell-Embling
15 Dec 2014
00:00

With India's 4G license holders running out of time to meet the terms of their 4G licenses, the nation's chief auditor has started looking into the matter.

India's Comptroller and Auditor General has written to the telecom ministry seeking the status of the operators' rollouts, the Economic Timesreported.

The six winners of spectrum during the 2010 BWA auction, now whittled down to five, were given five years to launch services.

The license terms stipulate that by July 2015 license holders must cover 90% of the population in urban areas and 50% in rural areas for the circles in which they won spectrum.

But so far only Bharti Airtel and Aircel have launched services. Reliance Jio Infocomm, the only company to have won spectrum in all 22 telecom circles, has not yet gone live. The operator has revealed that its network will cover around 5,000 towns ans cities and over 215,000 villages when it launches next year.

One of the 4G license winners, Qualcomm, sold the companies set up to buy 4G spectrum during the auction to incumbent Bharti Airtel.

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