The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) warned a high reserve price set for the country’s 5G auction will put additional downward pressure on mobile operators’ already sinking ARPU and slow growth of the sector, The Economic Times (ET) reported.

Concerned the current starting price will delay uptake of the new technology, the organisation called for the government to reduce the base price for 5G spectrum which will go on sale later in the year, ET wrote.

In a statement, the CII said: “India’s telecommunication sector has achieved global recognition for the speed of its growth and has the lowest tariffs in the world…High reserve prices of spectrum will halt this accelerated growth and deter uptake of telecom services by poorer sections of society.”

GSMA Intelligence said in May India had the world’s most affordable data rate of INR18.50 ($0.26) per GB. The country consumes nearly 1.5 billion GB of data per month and was ranked second in the world in terms of app downloads in 2018 by App Annie.

The CII urged the government to adopt a different auction pricing model, arguing the metric of dollars per megahertz, per population is “inappropriate” for a market where tariffs are extremely low and the population is high, the newspaper said.

It suggested shifting to a dollar/MHz/revenue or dollar/MHz/GDP metric for comparing spectrum price across different markets.