FM auction: TRAI is for Rs. 5 lakh reserve price for border cities in J&K and NE

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has recommended that the reserve price of FM radio channels for each of the 273 new cities be fixed at 80 percent of the valuation for each city. It, however, added that for cities situated in North East region and Jammu & Kashmir should have a lower reserve price at 40 percent of the valuation of each city.

The telecom and broadcast regulator on Saturday said that the valuation of each of these 273 cities has been worked out as ” a simple mean of three approaches” keeping in mind factors including population of the city, per capita Gross State Domestic Product, listenership of FM Radio and per capita gross revenue earned by existing popular radio operators among others.

The Information & Broadcasting Ministry had asked TRAI to give is recommendations on fresh reserve price for 283 cities (260 new +23 existing), under FM phase -III Policy.

“For 10 cities having a population of less than 1 lakh in the border areas of Jammu & Kashmir and the North East (NE) region, the reserve price is kept as Rs. 5 Lakh for each channel of each city,” the regulator said in a statement.

For participation in the auction, the regulator has also recommended doing away with the existing ceiling limit of 15 percent on the total number of frequencies that a radio operator can hold in the country.

“Auction of remaining channels of Phase-III should be done by delinking them from technology. Broadcasters should be permitted to use any technology (analogue or digital or both) for radio broadcasting on the frequency allocated to them through auction in future,” the regulator stated in its recommendations.

―The Hindu Business Line