Attorney General refuses to give second opinion on 2G spectrum

17 Oct 2012 Evaluate

Standing firm on earlier opinion, Attorney General (AG) has refused to give any fresh opinion on the inter-ministerial panel's decision of charging one-time fee for existing second-generation (2G) airwaves that would match the upcoming auction-determined price.

Highest law official in the country, Attorney-General Goolam E Vahanvati, earlier opined that only incumbent GSM operators such as Bharti, Idea, BSNL and Vodafone should be charged the auction-determined fee for excess airwaves they hold beyond the 6.2 MHz limit that too with a retrospective basis from July 2008.

The Empowered Group of Ministers (EGOM), however in the last week dismissing Attorney General's opinion, decided to charge all GSM operators prospectively a one-time fee for the remaining period of their 20-year licence for spectrums beyond 4.4 Mhz and CDMA operators to pay for all spectrum beyond 2.5 Mhz.

A day before the EGoM's meeting, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, casting its support in the favour of AG’s decision, averred that mobile phone companies should not be charged for airwaves up to the 6.2-MHz limit, as this was the contracted spectrum, and also squabbled that telcos made investments and built a market strategy on getting this quantum of airwaves, while adding that imposing a charge at this point would amount to unilaterally rewriting the contract.

The EGOM, however, was of the view that certain facts which the AG may not have taken into consideration for charging for spectrum above 6.2 MHz  is that the telecom department may be forced to give additional spectrum free to all those telcos who till now only have 4.4 MHz.

Further, the EGoM also felt that this will be against the spirit of the Supreme Court's order and therefore wanted a fresh opinion from the AG, which would be placed before the Union Cabinet, scheduled to meet on October 18 to decide on the EGoM’s recommendations. However, it remains important to be noted, that the industry will have to shell out a minimum of Rs 27,000 crore if the Union Cabinet clears the proposal in its meeting on Oct 18 .

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