Govt issues Rs 23,000 crore demand notice to telecom firms for excess spectrum

10 Jan 2013 Evaluate

The government is expected to get over Rs 23,000 crore from levy of one-time spectrum fee on existing operators for holding radiowaves beyond a prescribed limit. The government in this regard has issued notices to telecom companies including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and BSNL, MTNL, Aircel and Reliance Communications for the excess spectrum they hold beyond the prescribed limit. 

To be more precise, the government is expected to get Rs 4,251.83 crore from retrospective charges, Rs 18,925.82 crore from prospective charges. In all Rs 23,977.65 crore is expected from levy of one-time spectrum fee.

State-owned BSNL will have to pay around Rs 6,912 crore, Bharti Airtel - Rs 5,201 crore, Vodafone - Rs 3,599 crore, MTNL - Rs 3,205 crore, Idea Cellular - Rs 2,113 crore (includes Rs 231.5 crore of Spice), Aircel - Rs 1,365 crore (includes Rs 14 crore of Dishnet), Loop Mobile - Rs 606 crore and Reliance Communications - Rs 173 crore.

Earlier, for pan-India operations, telecom firms were given 4.4 MHz spectrum with license for Rs 1,658 crore and later were permitted to get another 1.8 MHz on fulfillment of certain subscriber-base criteria. However, in November, the government decided that the telecom operators will have to pay charges for holding spectrum above 6.2 MHz retrospectively, for the period of July 2008 to January 1, 2013. For spectrum above 4.4 MHz, they would have to pay for the remaining period of their licences starting January 1, 2013.

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