Big Tech Just Lost India's Most Expensive Airwave Battle

As 2025 drew to a close, a multibillion‑dollar battle in which Jio and Airtel faced off against Apple, Amazon and Meta over who controls the pipes of India's digital future was quietly resolved. India rolled out the National Frequency Allocation Plan 2025, the blueprint for radio-spectrum allocation. It reflects a political choice about whether the country's digital future will be infrastructure‑led or platform‑driven. The choice fell in favour of those who build towers and lay fibre, not on those who sit in app stores and cloud servers.

NFAP 2025 outlines how India allocates radio frequencies across services, spanning 8.3 kHz to 3000 GHz and serves as the master chart for everyone from wireless operators to equipment makers. Embedded in that frequency soup is the hotly contested 6 GHz spectrum, the mid‑band sweet spot that determines how fast networks feel and how much value accrues to those who pay for the airwaves. On this band, New Delhi has signalled to Big Tech that some doors will remain closed, regardless of market capitalisation.

For years, the digital story has been told as if Reliance Jio Infocomm, Bharti Airtel, Apple, and Amazon were part of the same happy ecosystem. They are not. Jio wrote a cheque of about ₹881 billion for spectrum in the 2022 auction, Airtel paid ₹430 billion, and Vodafone Idea staggered away with dues of ₹188 billion and a hope. Big Tech, operating under the Broadband India Forum banner, sought a slice of similar‑grade 6 GHz spectrum for free, citing the needs of unlicensed Wi‑Fi and innovation.

India has now carved the 6 GHz band into two very different economic zones. The lower half, 5925--6425 MHz, has already been delicensed for Wi‑Fi 6E, a move celebrated by the Broadband India Forum and the device ecosystem as pro‑innovation. The upper half, 6425--7125 MHz, 700 MHz wide, has been earmarked for licensed international mobile telecommunications. In practical terms, this means the band will belong to the mobile operators and will be sold, not given away. The same spectrum real estate that could have become a free playground for global platforms has instead been reserved as future inventory for Jio, Airtel, Vi and BSNL.

Behind the scene, lobbying was unusually intense. On one side, the Cellular Operators Association of India warned that delicensing the upper 6 GHz would irreversibly shut it out of 5G Advanced and 6G, deprive the exchequer of future auction revenues, and hand a disproportionate advantage to foreign over‑the‑top players. On the other, the Broadband India Forum argued that the band was neither technically nor commercially ready for mobile use and should be opened for Wi‑Fi 6E and Wi‑Fi 7, with any unused spectrum defaulting to unlicensed use. One side buttressed its case by citing sovereignty and fiscal loss. The other cited innovation and global harmonisation.

With the new policy, COAI has secured the strategic prize of a long‑term lock on 700 MHz in the upper 6 GHz band for licensed mobile services. The decision also illustrates India's emerging doctrine on digital economics. An infrastructure‑sovereign model reserves the most valuable mid‑band spectrum for players willing to commit capital expenditure and operate under regulatory obligations. It signals to equity investors that when capital that builds collides with capital that intermediates, the state will, at least for now, side with the builders.

Of course, the victory is not cheap. Telecom companies have not won free spectrum. They have merely won the right to bid for it. The upper 6 GHz band will feature in future auctions alongside other bands, forcing telecom operators to assess how much additional debt their balance sheets can absorb. Infrastructure sovereignty is an expensive habit. Platforms, by contrast, are free to download.

There is also a quieter risk embedded in this assertion of sovereignty. Some global chipset makers and Wi‑Fi advocates wanted India to wait until the 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference before allocating the upper 6 GHz for mobile phone use, to avoid diverging from global norms should the rest of the world converge on Wi‑Fi use. By moving early, India has effectively made a 6G bet before the rules are written. If the global ecosystem settles on a different allocation, India will still have 700 MHz locked away in regulation, leaving handset makers to manage yet another band configuration. The coming auctions will show whether telecom investors are willing to pay for that privilege.