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ShareMumbai: Ratan Tata, chairman of conglomerate Tata group, has urged the government to allocate spectrum simultaneously to all winners of a forthcoming third-generation wireless auction, said a report on Saturday.
The simultaneous allocation of spectrum would ensure a level playing field, the paper quoted Tata as saying in a letter to the cabinet secretary KM Chandrasekhar.
India, the world's fastest growing mobile market, is to hold an auction for 3G wireless spectrum in mid-January. And phone companies are expected by analysts to spend $1.5 billion on 3G spectrum alone. Building the high-speed wireless networks will cost billions of dollars more.
A person familiar with the letter's content said it was prompted by concerns that spectrum might be allocated as and when it became available instead of awarding equal amounts to winners.
Tata group runs Tata Teleservices, India's sixth largest telecoms firm. NTT DoCoMo owns 26 percent of Tata Tele. Officials at the Tata group could not be reached for comment immediately.
