The Adani Group has officially announced that they will participate in India’s 5G spectrum auction. The Ahmedabad-based enterprise confirmed its participation, which pits it against Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio, Sunil Bharti Mittal's Airtel and Kumar Mangalam Birla's Vodafone Idea in the telecom sector. Adani group has clarified that it has no interest in the consumer mobility space and is in the 5G airwaves sale race only to cater to its in-house businesses. While Jio, Airtel, and Vodafone Idea’s participation in this auction was expected, Adani entering in the race has taken the industry by surprise. July 8 was the last date to submit applications for auction.
Adani group said, “we are participating in the 5G spectrum auctions to provide private network solutions along with better cyber security for airports, ports and logistics, power generations, transmission, distribution and other manufacturing operations.” It added that access to the 5G spectrum will help the group to build digital platforms and data centre capabilities. “In addition, 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 company said if it was awarded the 5G spectrum auction, “it will also align with its recent announcement of significantly increasing Adani Foundation’s investments in education, healthcare and skill development in rural areas”. The pre-qualification of 5G spectrum bidders is listed on July 18 and mock auctions on July 22 and 23. According to India telecom rules, new entities can participate in the auction provided they obtain a unified license for offering mobile/data services in the country. The group recently obtained National Long Distance (NLD) and International Long Distance (ILD) licences.
