Videocon and Loop have decided to stay away from the next round of auction to be held on February 3. Wednesday was the last date for submitting the applications for bidding.

Leading telcos such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular and Reliance Jio Infocomm on Wednesday submitted their applications.

The GSM operators had stayed away from the participation in auction in March 2013. They had objected to high reserve or base price for this.

According to new schedule, DoT will announce the pre-qualification of bidders by January 25. They will have an option to withdraw their applications. Service providers had objected to DoT's move to remove the option of withdrawing their bids, as was allowed in the last auctions.

The withdrawal of bids by the operators has now been fixed for January 27and the final list of bidders will be announced on January 29. A mock auction will be conducted over January 30 and 31.

Total Spectrum put to Auction is 46 MHz in 900 MHz band and 403.2 MHz in 1800 MHz band.

The government on Wednesday said the next round of spectrum auction will begin as per schedule on February 3. It also hopes to resolve and finalize the pending issues before that.

Telecoms Secretary MF Farooqui said on the sidelines of the Telecom Sector Skill Council event said that pending issues, including the annual spectrum fee are expected to be resolved before the auction begins next month.

Arvind Bali, CEO and director of Videocon Telecom, said the company was keen to bid for the 900 MHz spectrum for Delhi and additional 2 MHz spectrum each in Punjab and MP circles on the 1,800 MHz band.

“But it was felt that 4G LTE (long-term evolution) rollout would be a catalyst for making a differentiation. However, worldwide, the 4G LTE ecosystem is not that evolved in the 900 MHz space. That makes the cost of deployment very expensive, thus making 900 MHz not suitable for 4G. We feel that the 4G ecosystem in 900 MHz band should evolve in the coming years and that should be the time we will look at options,” he said in a statement.