The Department of Telecom has announced that auctions for the 3G spectrum in India will be conducted by December 30. There will be a total of 66 auctions held which includes 22 each for CDMA, Broadband Wireless Access and GSM.

Earlier, it was expected that the CDMA licenses would simply be handed out to Reliance and Tata on a pro-rata basis for payment but since then the department has decided to have more than just two licenses and after taking in the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the DoT will be holding auctions for CDMA licenses too.

Provided the auction is held within the stipulated time, it can be expected that most private players will be providing 3G services by early to mid 2009. However, government owned telecom providers including MTNL are expected to start 3G services much earlier.