Vodafone has reportedly asked the Indian government to ensure the country’s long-awaited 3G spectrum auction takes place next year, as the global financial downturn takes its toll. India’s Economic Times cites a communication from Vodafone’s director of public policy for emerging markets, Neil Gough, to the country’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT), in which he explains that “mobilising financial commitments in the current environment is proving to be an extended process.” The report adds that Vodafone, pushing its case for postponing the auction, claims that “borrowers could expect the process to take three months from the beginning to end (some banks are currently taking in excess of one month to obtain their credit sanctions) with no guarantee of success. In this environment, we suggest that the department provides a very minimum of one-month’s notice of the specific date of the auction and preferably longer.”

There appears to be mixed messages coming from India over the timeframe of the auction. Although the auction was originally scheduled for December this year, reports last week suggested it has already been pushed back to January 2009. India’s DOT is expected to eventually make 60MHz of national 3G spectrum available that will be compatible with both GSM- and CDMA-based 3G technologies, and may issue as many as ten licenses. State-owned operators BSNL and MTNL have already each been awarded a block of 5MHz spectrum in the 2.1GHz band ahead of the auction for privately-owned operators, though both will eventually be required to pay a license fee equivalent to the highest price paid in the private auction.