The Union Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has failed to decide on the proposal of charging a one-time, auction-determined fee for all airwaves held by existing telecom operators, as it was opposed by Finance Ministry, Planning Commission and the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion. And the issue has been allocated to the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) to decide.
With an objective to level up between the new entrants and the incumbents, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has proposed the levying of one-time spectrum charge for the remaining period of license based on the auction. The DoT had put across three proposals to the cabinet - to levy one-time fee on all airwaves held by existing operators, to charge a fee on spectrum beyond the start-up spectrum of 4.4 MHz or to impose the fee on spectrum held beyond the contracted spectrum of 6.2 MHz.
The decision to charge the fee would hit the operators including Bharti Airtel and Vodafone, who have not been affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling to cancel the 122 licenses issued in 2008, but will then have to shell huge amount of money.
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