Internet prices may see a considerable increase of around 30 percent as the Department of Telecom or DoT has decided to levy new taxes. The board has issued a corrigendum to the new telecom licenses agreement so the revenue from these services will go under its cess net.
The initial version of the Unified License was released earlier this month and DoT had then revealed that the revenue obtained from internet services will be exempted from adjusted gross revenue (AGR). This was actually a part of the earnings of telecom operators on which the government received an annual license fee, reveals a report on Times of India via PTI.
Till sometime back, the government had decided to adopt another procedure for calculating AGR. The amount left after deducting revenue from pure internet services, sales tax paid to the government and revenue paid to the other carriers across the country for roaming services from the total revenue collected by service providers, was considered the AGR.
As of now this procedure has been altered a bit and via a corrigendum that has been issued regarding the calculation of AGR, DoT has disclosed that revenue from pure internet services will not be deducted henceforth. The uniform license fee for all network and internet service providers has been decided to be 8 percent of the AGR. This is basically the reason why internet charges will be increased by up to 30 percent.
New services will now be required to sign up for the Unified license, while existing companies will have to take it up after their current one expires.