The department of telecommunications (DoT), on Sunday, has announced that the auction for 3G spectrum in India will be held on December 7. Telecom service providers in India are asked to file their bids from October 26 to November 13.

The DoT has said that all the bidders are required to submit their doubts related to auction before October 8, and a pre-bid conference has been organized on October 12.

The Third Generation services (3G) will provide an enhanced data rates to the customers, which will improve the voice services. With 3G technology high speed data, downloading and video streaming will become possible.

Mr. Andimuthu Raja, Communications Minister, said that the government is expecting to raise around Rs 35,000 crore from the auctions for licenses to provide 3G mobile- phone services and WiMax wireless broadband services in India.

Mr. Raja added that the empowered group of ministers (eGoM) in the supervision of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee had set Rs 3,500 crore as the minimum price for 3G spectrum auction on an all-India basis.

The eGoM had decided that for private service providers, a maximum of four frequency slots would be auctioned for each of the nation’s 22 phone-service zones.

It had also been decided that there would be three 20 MHz slots of BWA spectrum at a reserve price of Rs 1,750 crore and one 2X1.25 MHz slot of EVDO spectrum at a reserve price of Rs 875 crore on the block.

The DoT has also organized a mock auction on October 3 and 4. To strengthen the security concerns, the DoT will issue a revised information memorandum on September 29.