Govt likely to issue one-time demand notice to CDMA operators

The Government is likely to slap an over Rs 500 crore demand notice on Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices towards one-time fee for spectrum the companies hold beyond a threshold.

The Department of Telecom (DoT) has decided to raise a demand of Rs 500 crore for spectrum RCom holds beyond 2.5 MHz in the CDMA band in few circles.

The notice may be issued in the next couple of days, official sources said.

The amount for demand notice has been calculated on the auction discovered price of CDMA spectrum.

State-run BSNL also holds CDMA spectrum above 2.5 MHz in Kerala but the company has already written to the government that it is willing to return the excess airwaves.

The DoT has already issued demand notices to old GSM operators for collecting one-time spectrum fee. The government is likely to get over Rs 23,000 crore from the GSM operators.

In November, the government decided that existing GSM operators should pay for holding spectrum above 6.2 MHz retrospectively, from July 2008 to December 31, 2012. For spectrum above 4.4MHz, they would have to pay for the remaining period of their licences starting January 1, 2013.

For CDMA operators, it was decided to charge for spectrum above 2.5 MHz.