Department of Telecommunications in its demand notice has asked telecom
majors Airtel and Vodafone to pay around Rs. 3,800 crore as one-time
spectrum fee during this month.
According to sources, DoT has given
Airtel the option of paying Rs. 1,758.07 crore this month as first
instalment from the total amount of Rs. 5,201.24 crore levied on the
company as one-time spectrum charge for additional and excess spectrum
it holds.
Similarly, DoT has given Vodafone the opting of paying
Rs. 2,093.61 crore as first instalment, out of total of about Rs. 3,599 in
January. When contacted, both Airtel and Vodafone did not immediately
offer any comments on the matter. DoT on Wednesday issued demand notice
to eight companies asking them to pay one-time spectrum charges as
decided by government.
This also included State-owned BSNL which
has been asked to pay total amount of about Rs. 6,912 crore, followed
MTNL (Rs. 3,205 crore). Idea Cellular was asked pay Rs. 2,113 crore
(including Rs. 231.5 crore of Spice), Aircel Rs. 1,365 crore (including Rs.
14 crore of Dishnet), Loop Mobile Rs. 606 crore and Reliance
Communications Rs. 173 crore. The schedule of payment to be made by these
firms could not be ascertained.
The government is likely to get
Rs. 4,251.83 crore from retrospective charges, and Rs. 18,925.82 from
prospective charges for excess radiowaves held by mobile operators. In
all, around Rs. 23,177 crore is expected from levy of one-time spectrum
fee, sources added. Initially, telecom firms were given 4.4 MHz spectrum
along with licence for Rs. 1,658 crore for pan-India operations and
later they were entitled to get another 1.8 MHz on fulfilment of certain
subscriber-base criteria.
In November, the government decided
that the operators should pay for holding spectrum above 6.2 MHz
retrospectively, from July 2008 to January 1, 2013. After that, for
spectrum above 4.4 MHz, they would have to pay for the remaining period
of their licences based on auction held last November.
Sources
said the Department of Telecom (DoT) has tentatively fixed provisional
rate for spectrum in 1800 Mhz band for Delhi, Mumbai, Rajasthan and
Karnataka circles where it did not receive any bids, as also for the
more efficient 900 MHz band.