Continuing their tirade against the TRAI’s recommendations on spectrum pricing, the chiefs of Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, Idea Cellular, Uninor and Videocon met telecom minister Kapil Sibal and Department of Telecom Secretary R Chandrashekhar on Tuesday and apprised them of the their concerns.

Along with them the representatives of CDMA operators Sistema Shyam Teleservices, Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices and CDMA body AUSPI also met Kapil Sibal.

These CEOs reiterated that the Mobile call rates would double in some circles if the recommendations of sectoral regulator Trai on spectrum pricing are accepted. They discussed the TRAI recommendation on reserve price, its impact and refarming with Sibal.  

For the last one week these CEOs have been building pressure on the government not to accept the TRAI recommendations on 2G spectrum auction. Several telcom bodies are also supporting their cause. The telcos are peeved over the high base price for auction.

"There will be circles which will have more than a 100% price rise (in tariffs) if they were to absorb the impact of what is being recommended," Bharti Airtel CEO Sanjay Kapoor told reporters here.    

"In one circle, the cost of spectrum, the reserve price is Rs 7 crore and on other end, there are metros where it is Rs 717 crore, which is a 100 times differential," he said.

Commenting on the Trai’s 2 paise assumption, Kapoor said that the regulator has not considered the price elasticity of demand while formulating the 2 paise assumption.

He said that there is a 30 paise per minute impact and not 2 paise as Trai has assumed.