Telecom stocks trade higher led by Bharti Airtel

Telecom stocks were trading higher on Thursday following the Centre’s decision to invite bidding from March 1 for the sixth round of spectrum auction for radiowaves worth Rs 3.92 lakh crore.

At 1:20 pm, the S&P BSE telecom index was ruling at 1,386.95, up 57.98 points or 4.36 per cent.

Led by Bharti Airtel, whose shares were up by 5.21 per cent, shares of GTL Infra, HFCL, Vodafone Idea and Indus Towers Ltd also rose by 4.85 per cent, 4.86 per cent, 3.54 per cent and 2.62 per cent, respectively. Other stocks such as Optimus Infracom, Vindhya Telelinks, Tata Communications and Tejas Networks also ruled firm. However, Reliance Industries, which owns Jio, was ruling flat, after opening with a marginal gain.

The Union Cabinet had approved a proposal for the auction of 2,251.25 Megahertz (MHz) of spectrum worth Rs 3.92 lakh crore at base price on December 17, 2020. The Department of Telecom (DoT) will hold a pre-bid conference on January 12 while the last date for seeking clarifications to the notice is January 28. Telecom operators will need to submit their applications for participation in the auction by February 5.

"The next spectrum auction is scheduled to begin on March 1, 21. However, the crucial date to watch for is February 5, 2021, the final date for interested operators to submit their applications. The earnest money deposit would provide an indication of operators’ intention to invest in spectrum. We expect the upcoming auction to be restricted to airwaves coming up for renewal, and we don’t expect the 700MHz spectrum to find bidders," said ICICI Securities.