New Delhi: Two major telecom players -- Bharti Airtel and BSNL -- want an uniform licence fee of six percent on revenues from all services like mobile, landline, long distance telephony, ISP among others.
A Department of Telecom panel had recommended 8.5 percent as the uniform licence fee.
Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communication, however, says
licence fee should be decided based on the revenue slab of the
company based on gross or adjusted gross revenue and the
incumbent operators should be asked to pay higher licence fee
for holding excess spectrum beyond contractual amount of 6.2
Mhz of spectrum for GSM players and 5 Mhz of spectrum for CDMA
operators.
The operators responded to TRAI consultation paper on
'overall spectrum management and review of licence terms and
conditions'.
At present, fixed line and mobile operators pay 6-10 per
cent, depending on the circles, as licence fee while NLD, ILD
and VSAT as well as Internet with Net telephony paying only
six per cent while pure ISPs pay no licence fee.
DoT mooted the idea of uniform licence fee after
allegation came against RCom that the operator was passing
higher revenue earning services to the low licence fee
category thereby causing loss to the exchequer.
BSNL and Bharti Airtel said that uniform licence fee will
reduce the arbitrage and ensure the level playing field.
Further, this will be easy to implement in a transparent
manner and will maximise the revenues to the exchequer.
Bureau Report
First Published: Sunday, November 15, 2009, 15:37