DoT partly accepts Trai's report on spectrum related issues

The Telecom Ministry is understood to have disfavoured a lower licence fee of 6% as against up to 10% now while accepting suggestions with regard to delinking of licences with spectrum, on M&As and reframing of 800/900 MHz spectrum.

Last month, Trai had made its recommendations on spectrum management and licensing framework recommending Rs 10,972.45 crore for a pan-India licence with 6.2 MHz spectrum, a 'one-time' fee for additional spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz at the rate of Rs 4,571.87 crore for one MHz for pan-India.

The seven-member team of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), involving officials from Technical and Finance divisions, is understood to have given its report on Trai's recommendations to Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal, sources in the know said.

The DoT had earlier suggested a uniform licence fee of 8.5% of Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) and the DoT team has stuck to its proposal while declining Trai's recommendations of uniform license fee of 6% to avoid any revenue loss to the government.

DoT Committee has also accepted the spectrum assignment with an upper limit of 6.2 MHz of GSM spectrum and 5 MHz of CDMA spectrum for all service areas other than Delhi and Mumbai, for which the upper limit will be 10 MHz. However, the DoT is unlikely to accept the recommendations with respect to non-auctioning of 2G spectrum and the contracted spectrum.

Trai had recommended not to auction 2G spectrum in 800, 900 and 1,800 MHz band.

Further, DoT has also endorsed Trais recommendations on merger and acquisition so that the market share of the resultant entity should not be greater than 30% of the total sunbsciber base and the annual gross revenue in the service area subject to that the number of service providers should not fall below 6 in this area.