Billionaire Gautam Adani’s Adani Group, on Saturday, announced that it would be participating in the upcoming 5G spectrum auction by the government. With Adani Group’s entry, four companies are in the race to bid for 5G spectrum allocation. Adani Group will be directly competing against Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio, Sunil Bharti Mittal's Airtel and Aditya Birla Group’s Vodafone Idea (Vi).

Here’s what we know so far about the conglomerate’s entry into the telecom industry.

While Adani Group is entering the auction for the spectrum, the coal-to-food processing group is not looking to enter the consumer telecom industry. In a statement issued on July 9, the group said that it would be entering the 5G spectrum race to implement it in all its private businesses.

“We are participating in the 5G spectrum auction to provide private network solutions along with enhanced cyber security in the airport, ports and logistics, power generation, transmission, distribution and various manufacturing operations,” the statement said.

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Adani Group needs ultra-high-quality data streaming capabilities through the 5G network for its businesses and that’s what prompted the conglomerate to participate in the spectrum auction.

“As we build our own digital platform encompassing super apps, edge data centres, and industry command and control centres, we will need ultra-high-quality data streaming capabilities through a high frequency and low latency 5G network across all our businesses,” the group also added.

With cash-rich Adani Group now joining the race for allocation of 5G spectrum, a bidding war may emerge for the mid (3300 MHz) and high (26 GHz) frequency bands. This could be a sticking point for cash-strapped Vodafone Idea which may either overbid or not manage to secure any spectrum for itself. Adani’s entry into enterprise communications, especially for ports and airports, could also threaten enterprise revenue streams for India’s telecom majors, which had been looking at 5G usage in the enterprise use segment as an important source of revenue. Enterprise revenue from 5G has been pegged at 40 percent of the entire 5G revenue, according to industry estimates reported ET.

The government will be selling a total of 72,097.85 MHz spectrum worth at least Rs 4.3 lakh crore at the base price. The 5G spectrum auction will be held on July 26. The new spectrum is expected to have 10x the speed of the 4G spectrum, and winning bidders will not be required to make any upfront payments.

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(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)

First Published:Jul 11, 2022 11:42 AM IST