The telecom minister Kapil Sibal has said that the EGoM will clear the contentious issue of spectrum usage charge on Monday. The government has already made it clear that it will resolve all the issues before the next round of spectrum auction scheduled to begin on February 3.
Addressing the media persons Sibal said that ministerial panel will meet on January 27. Monday is also the last date of withdrawal of applications by the companies.
It is learnt that before the EGoM meeting, the inter-Ministerial panel Telecom Commission may take a decision on Sunday on SUC and other pending issues. EGoM then will then take a final call on Monday.
Under the current SUC policy, charges are levied according to the amount of airwaves held by the operators, and are charged between 3% to 8% basis the spectrum allocation. In short, the Incumbents who are holding large amount of spectrum will end up paying SUC at the upper end of the range.
GSM industry body Cellular Operators Association of India, which represents operators like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea is of the view that the government should implement the Trai suggestion while Reliance Jio and Videocon Telecom are opposing any change in existing SUC regime, specially those radiowaves that have been already allocated. |