Govt plans to charge all users of radio waves

The government is mulling to charge all users like defence and other captive users of radio waves on the lines of telecom mobile operators linked to their revenues.

The Department of Telecom (DoT) has proposed to form a high-level committee to review the spectrum usage fee being paid by the government departments and other users.

Spectrum usage fee is a charge paid to the DoT for using the radio waves. While the private operators pay the spectrum fees as a percentage of their revenue, the government departments pay a very nominal spectrum fee.

"It is proposed that a high level spectrum pricing committee may be constituted, which shall look into revision of existing spectrum pricing structure, which is not based on adjusted gross revenue basis at present," an internal note of the DoT said.

This committee would also examine bringing other wireless services under the umbrella of spectrum usage charge based on AGR.

The DoT is now planning to compute the spectrum fee of the government departments on the basis of their revenues.

Most of government departments including Defence, Home, Petroleum, Power use spectrum for their internal communications.

Besides, the broadcasting department also uses spectrum for the FM and television services.

The move could see government departments shelling out more towards spectrum fee.

This is not the first time that DoT is trying to revise the existing price structure of the government departments. The earlier, attempts were met with opposition from different ministries including the Defence.

The proposed committee would be mandated to submit its recommendations  by March 31, 2011.

The broad mandate for the committee would be to "suggest appropriate methodology of pricing of spectrum used by captive users including all government users".

It will also suggests methods of spectrum usage charges for other radio and television broadcasting services.

The committee would be finalised after the approval of the Telecom Minister A Raja.