Telecom stocks end on mixed note

Telecom stocks ended on a mixed note on Tuesday, the first day of the 5G spectrum auction.

Shares of Bharti Airtel gained 0.83 per cent to settle at Rs 683.80 apiece on the BSE. During the day, it climbed 1 per cent to Rs 685.10.

Vodafone Idea fell 1.01 per cent to Rs 8.83 apiece. In intra-day trade, it dipped 1.56 per cent to Rs 8.78.

Shares of Reliance Industries ended flat at Rs 2,420.50 apiece, up 0.01 per cent.

India's first auction of 5G spectrum, that powers ultra-high data speeds, is currently underway with a total of 72 GHz (gigahertz) of radiowaves worth at least Rs 4.3 lakh crore up for bidding.

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio, Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and a unit of billionaire Gautam Adani's flagship Adani Enterprises are in the race to bid for 5G spectrum, that offers speeds about 10 times faster than 4G, lag-free connectivity, and can enable billions of connected devices to share data in real-time.

In the equity market, the 30-share BSE benchmark fell by 497.73 points or 0.89 per cent to settle at 55,268.49.