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Journalism of Courage
The government has decided to auction CDMA licences for 3G services, a change in policy that means Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices will have to bid for spectrum they were previously guaranteed of getting.
No. 2 mobile operator Reliance Communications and sixth-ranked Tata Teleservices are the only operators with major CDMA operations in India, where the GSM platform dominates.
At the start of August, the government announced plans for a global auction of 3G licences. At the time only two CDMA licences were thought to be available, so the plan was that Reliance and Tata would pay a pro-rata price based on the outcome of the GSM auction, telecom minister Andimuthu Raja said on Thursday.
8220;Now one more operator has been permitted. So again we consulted the TRAI Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and took a decision that it can also be auctioned,8221; the minister said.
