No licence fee for non-telecom revenue: HC

The Tripura High Court has ordered that revenue earned by telecom operators from activities unrelated to their license cannot be included for calculating an operator's adjusted gross revenue (AGR).
The court delivered the verdict yesterday on an appeal by Bharti Hexacom, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel.
Justice S Talapatra in his verdict said, "The definition of gross revenue shall not include the revenue from the activities unrelated to the license of the licensee company."
The court has also ruled that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) change the definition of AGR for working out revenue share of the telecom operators.
Bharti Hexacom had filed the appeal in 2013 against the government over the issue of calculating AGR for telecom operators.

Currently telecom companies pay about 8 per cent of their AGR as licence fee and a percentage of AGR as spectrum usage charges.