Trai: Telcos must pay Rs 16,000cr

Feb 10, 2011 |

Correspondent

Feb. 9: It’s time to pay up for old telecom operators like BSNL, Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, which got spectrum free above their contractual limit of 6.2 Mhz.

On Wednesday, Trai recommended that these companies should pay Rs 4,571 crore for every MHz of spectrum they hold on a pan-India basis over the contractual limit of 6.2 Mhz.

This means additional revenue of Rs 16,000 crore for the government if it accepts these recommendations, an analysis by Emkay Global Financial Services shows. BSNL, which holds the maximum amount of additional spectrum, will have to pay Rs 7,000 crore.

The CAG had criticised the way spectrum was given free beyond 6.2 Mhz. BSNL has excess spectrum in 19 cricles (61 Mhz), Bharti in 13 (32 Mhz), Vodafone in seven (19.6 Mhz), Idea in six (12.6 Mhz), MTNL in two (12.4 Mhz), BPL in one, Reliance in one, Aircel in one and Spice (now Idea) in one, the CAG report said.

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