The mega spectrum auction plan, which was recommended by the department of telecommunications (DoT), was approved by the cabinet today. This is the biggest spectrum auction which is estimated to fetch about Rs 5.66 lakh crore.

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that the cabinet has also approved all suggestions made by the DoT and TRAI. The approved auction will have spectrum bands of 700MHz, 800MHz, 900MHz 1800MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz and 2500 MHz available for sale.      

The government is auctioning 700 MHz for the first time, for which regulator TRAI had recommended a record high base price of Rs 11,485 crore per MHz.

Regarding pricing of user spectrum user charges, TRAI will go through the documents and fix the user spectrum charges as soon as possible.

 The entire proposal has been approved and the government expects to raise at least Rs. 64,000 crores from the auction of about 2300MHz of spectrum and Rs. 98,995 crores from various services in the telecom sector in 2016-17.

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