Uninor on Thursday reiterated that it will not participate in the bid for 2 spectrum auctions if the TRAI recommendations on the reserve price are accepted.

The company which is set to lose 21 spectrum licences following the Supreme Court’s February 2 verdict however lauded the Telecom Commission’s decision to put up 10 MHz of spectrum for auction instead of Trai’s recommended 5 MHz.

Urging the government to review DoT’s decision of asking the operators to make an upfront payment of the auction proceeds the company's India head, Sigve Brekke said that not only the base price is very high, banks are not willing to lend us such a huge sum in one go.

"As a new operator, Uninor also does not have a positive cash flow to fund these costs. Further, upfront payments will create an unequal impact for new operators since in the best case scenario, a new operator will need to pay double the amount upfront to continue operations," the company said.

“We have already borrowed close to R8,000 crore from foreign banks so we have largely exhausted that route, secondly foreign loans are mostly short term and we will need resources for a long period of time,” Brekke said.