Court issues stay order on excess spectrum fee collection till March

25 Jan 2013 Evaluate

Giving relief to leading mobile players, the Bombay High Court has issued a stay order on the government’s decision to collect a one-time fee for excess spectrum. Based on a petition filed by Idea Cellular challenging the Department of Telecom (DoT) order to pay the one-time fee, the High court has issued the stay order on the DoT, restricting it to take any coercive action until March 1.

With this, Idea Cellular got immediate relief; other operators are expected to follow the same by filing a petition and seeking a stay on the DoT order. Further, mobile operators also said that the government’s decision to collect the one time spectrum fee was illegal as the spectrum with the operators has been allocated by the government under policies prevalent at that time.

Earlier, the government had decided that all GSM operators with more than 4.4 Mhz spectrum will have to pay a one-time fee for the remaining period of their 20-year licence and operators using CDMA technology will have to pay for all spectrum over 2.5 Mhz. However, this was done after the Government was criticized for giving away additional spectrum on subscriber-linked criteria without paying any additional charge.

As per the government, the surcharges for long-established telecom players are aimed at creating a balanced level between old and new operators. 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. But now the mobile operators have two months before the court takes a final decision.

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