The industry lobby the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (Auspi) in a communication to the department (DoT) has made the case for auctioning airwaves in the 800 MHz band simultaneously with GSM bands of 1800 MHz and 900 MHz.

"It was imperative that our members have information on relative reserve prices, quantum of spectrum to be auctioned etc for all three bands well before auctions so that they decide right mix of spectrum for them in these three spectrum bands," Auspi said in one of the letters.

The contention of AUSPI is that  de-linking the 800 MHz band auction from that of the GSM bands is 'discriminatory' and impairs auction participation plans of its members such as Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices that operate in both GSM and CDMA bands.

The lobby group said that the DoT with the approval of the EGoM decided to cut down reserve price of spectrum from the price decided in November 2012 and hold auctions on the reduced reserve price in March 2013. Thus, there is a recent precedent of reserve price decision by the DoT/EGoM.