In India, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) conducts auctions of licenses for electromagnetic spectrum.
Under this model, the government would select companies that it deemed were best equipped to develop India's telecom infrastructure.
According to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) charge sheet, several laws were violated and bribes paid to favour certain firms in granting 2G spectrum licenses.
[6][7] The Indian National Congress coalition government undercharged mobile telephone companies for frequency allocation licenses, which they then used to create 2G spectrum subscriptions for cell phones.
[9] On 2 February 2012, the Supreme Court of India ruled on a public interest litigation (PIL) related to the 2G spectrum case.
The court declared the allotment of spectrum "unconstitutional and arbitrary", cancelling the 122 licenses issued in 2008 under A. Raja (Minister of Communications & IT from 2007 to 2009), the primary official accused.
[10] The court found that Raja "wanted to favour some companies at the cost of the public exchequer" and "virtually gifted away important national asset[s].
In the four metro circles - Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai - the DoT fixed several prerequisites for potential bidders to meet in order to be eligible for the auction.
The criteria included financial resources, reliability, and investment in research, as well as specific details such as rate of network rollout, pricing, quality, and competitiveness.
In these circles, the government required that all potential bidders must have foreign partner in order to be eligible.
The government proceeded on the assumption that no Indian company, at the time, had the financial resources and technical knowledge to provide large scale mobile services.
Concerns were also raised about the possibility of a monopoly if a single company secured multiple licences.
In order to address this concern, the auction rules were altered to prohibit a single company from operating in more than 3 circles.
The winners were awarded spectrum in September, and Tata Docomo was the first private operator to launch 3G services in India.
The five most expensive circles were Delhi, Mumbai, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.
Three of the eleven blocks, in each circle, were reserved for new telecom players or operators whose licences were cancelled by the Supreme Court on 2 February 2012, following the 2G spectrum case.
Existing players whose licences were not affected by the Supreme Court verdict can bid for only 2 blocks in each circle.
Videocon was announced as a pre-qualifier in the bidding process by the DoT on 29 October, but withdrew its application on 2 November.
The withdrawals meant that there were no bidders left and the CDMA spectrum auction was subsequently cancelled.
[35] Vodafone Group's CEO Vittorio Colao stated, "The problem is that in India there is a misperception of what is the value of spectrum.
We have told them [Indian government] a number of times that the order of magnitude that they have in mind just does not make sense".
[32] The sole bidder in the auction was Sistema Shyam TeleServices Limited (SSTL), under the brand name MTS, who bid for spectrum in the 800 MHz band.
Reliance Jio, the only company to have all-India 4G license entered into voice service and won in 14 circles in 1800 MHz frequency.
[49] Though TRAI completed consultation with stake holders no further action has happened probably because of the industry's demand to push back the spectrum sale.
[51] More recently, in December 2019, the Digital Communications Commission (DCC) decided to keep the reserve prices for the sale of 8,300 mega hertz (MHz) spectrum at Rs 5.22 lakh crore.
[54] Dot assigned the airwaves to the respective winners on 16 April 2021 after an extensive Spectrum Harmonization exercise across the 800, 900, 1800, 2100 and 2300 MHz bands.
[55] The auction received bids worth INR 1.50 trillion across frequency bands including 5G.