TTSL, RCom, others owe Rs 603 cr; Airtel pays highest revenue

Tata Teleservices, Reliance Communications and other private mobile telecom operators owe over Rs 603 crore to the government towards outstanding spectrum charges and licence fee for the last three years.

Bharti Airtel paid the highest revenue, both in terms of spectrum charges as well as licence fee, to the government in the last three years.

"TTSL is at top with Rs 351.64 crore outstanding spectrum charges followed by RCom with Rs 118.09 crore as spectrum charges and Rs 48.55 crore towards licence fee outstanding," Minister of State for Telecom Gurudas Kamat said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.

In all, nine private telecom companies are in the list with amounts outstandings against them.

Bharti Airtel is at the top in terms of revenues earned by the government during last three years with the company paying Rs 1,355.14 crore as spectrum charges in 2008-09 out of total revenues of Rs 2,927 crore from all operators. Airtel has also an outstanding amount of Rs 56.31 crore.

In a market of nearly 500 million mobile subscribers, Airtel continues to be the market leader with over 110 million users, maintaining a market share of about 25 per cent.