"We believe that the price that has been set or proposed for 700 MHz just makes it very, very expensive for us to buy any of that spectrum, so we believe we cannot afford to buy that spectrum at that price," Gopal Vittal, Airtel India CEO said answering a query from analysts. Earlier in January, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had recommended a reserve price of Rs 11,485 crore per MHz for pan India airwaves for the next round of auctions. This includes the base spectrum pricing for seven bands, including the 700 MHz spectrum which is being offered for the first time and supposedly offers high quality mobile broadband and 4G. The spectrum auction could fetch the government Rs 5.36 lakh crore if frequency is sold at Rs 11,485 crore per MHz. The 700 MHz band spectrum could independently cost Rs 4 lakh crore at the same price. Although, Vittal emphasized the importance of the 700 Mhz band of spectrum for the company's 4G services offering. "I just will say that 700 MHz is a valuable spectrum, because it has great propagation characteristics. It has to be balanced with the fact that ecosystem that you have on 700 MHz in terms of devices and chipset is still very nascent," he added. The management at Airtel declined to give the number of 4G users in the country. The last time Airtel disclosed its 4G subscribers was in January 2014 and the company reported that it had crossed the 100,000…
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