The sale of 5G telecom spectrum concluded on Wednesday, just the second day of the auction process, with the government reportedly collecting around ₹11,300 crore. This is barely about 12% of the ₹96,238 crore worth of airwaves that had been put up for sale. Clearly, demand didn’t turn out as strong as expected. At the last auction in 2022, a staggering ₹1.5 trillion worth of spectrum was sold over seven days.
That possibly might have set the expectations high for the latest auction as well. But back then, 5G spectrum was just being rolled out and telecom companies were rushing to get hold of whatever they could get. This time, the situation is different. Telecom firms already have their 5G spectrum requirements met and don’t appear to need much more.
Market adoption of 5G services has also been underwhelming so far, with its high-speed connections probably helping business customers but not making too notable a difference to individual users. That may explain why service providers are yet to start asking people to pay a premium for it. Most of what smartphone users do can be done with 4G. Like with handsets, recent improvements seem too incremental.