The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has slashed the proposed one time charge to Rs 1,989.18 crore from Rs 2,764.29 that was originally demanded for airwaves held by nine mobile phone companies whose permits were quashed by Supreme Court in February 2012.
Earlier, in December, the government had imposed a one-time fee on telecom operators both prospectively and retrospectively for the airwaves they currently hold. Meanwhile, all leading telecom companies have challenged this fee in court. One-time charges have been calculated for spectrum allocated on a pro-rata basis based on the approved reserve price of airwaves in 1800 MHz and 800 MHz band auctioned last November.
The retrospective component of this charge also applies to the nine companies whose licences were canceled in February last year. Accordingly, DoT has provisionally computed one-time airwave charges for these operators by pegging licence validity till February 15, 2013 as there is no information on these players subsequently inking unified licences. Telecom players which are expected to incur biggest losses are Unitech Wireless, or Uninor at Rs 515.63 crore, followed by Sistema Shyam Teleservices at Rs 490.96 crore, Videocon Telecommunications at Rs 478.09 crore, Idea Cellular Rs 162.17 crore.
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