2G plan favours rivals: Reliance Comm
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Reliance Communications, India's second-ranked mobile carrier, said on Friday the telecoms regulator's 2G spectrum price proposals favoured its older rivals such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone's India unit.
Reliance Communications, which is predominantly a CDMA operator and expanded its GSM services a few years ago, said in a statement the proposals by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) would cause a 'revenue loss' for the government and 'large savings' to old GSM operators.
It estimated the government would have a revenue loss of 64.74 billion rupees ($1.4 billion) due to the new proposals.
The company said older GSM operators would now have to pay only for the balance licence period, which is less than five years for many players, as against the regulator's earlier recommendation for a minimum seven years.
The TRAI has recommended a steep increase in prices of 2G spectrum that would also see companies holding more than 6.2 mega hertz spectrum paying a one-time fee for that, a move that would hit older operators on the GSM platform.
Older GSM carriers such as Bharti, Vodafone and Idea Cellular have criticised the proposals that could see them pay hundreds of millions dollars in one-time fee.
Vodafone has said the proposals were 'discriminatory' against older operators, while Bharti has called them unfair.
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