DoT (Department of Telecommunications) will soon be slapping demand notices on 9 telecom companies, ordering them to pay Rs 2451 crores to the government if they wish to continue providing services to customers. This has come more than two years after India’s Supreme Court judged that 122 2G permits given to these operators in 2008 were invalid.
The country’s highest court holds the opinion that the concerned allocation policy which awarded spectrum on first-come-first-serve basis was flawed. The ruling was made public in February 2012 following mass furor over this telecom scandal which was one of the biggest to have rocked the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government’s 10-year tenure.
An internal document has revealed that 9 mobile operators will have to cough up Rs 2451 crores as one-time spectrum usage charges for the circles in which they deliver their services, says a report on The Economic Times. Previously, the fee was reckoned at Rs 1989 crores, but it changed owing to an alteration in the closure day.
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The High Court issued a directive asking DoT to conduct new auctions for spectrum based on TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) recommendations. And the usage charges were supposed to be calculated on a pro rata basis from the date of the court order until the time the telecom brands continued to offer services.
With regards to those companies such as Uninor and Sistema Shyam Services which won back their spectrum during the new round of auctions, the one-time fee will only apply until the day before they inked a unified license agreement with the Indian government, reveals a DoT official.