Telecom panel agrees licence fee for all operators
Telecom Commission has given its nod to imposing a uniform licence fee of 8.5 per cent on all telecom operators. Operators currently pay between 6 per cent and 10 per cent of their annual revenues as licence fee. Though the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had recommended bringing down the licence fee to a uniform 6 per cent, a panel set up by the DoT pegged this at 8.5 per cent in order to protect Government income.
The Telecom Commission in its meeting on July 22 overruled the TRAI suggestions and ratified the views of the DoT committee in this regard. This move will benefit operators in Metro areas which are currently paying 10 per cent of the annual revenues. However, Internet Service Providers and Long Distance Telephone operators would have to pay out more as they currently pay only 6 per cent. For pan-India players, this move will not have any major impact as they end up paying about 8.5 per cent of the overall revenues on an average. The Commission also decided to take legal opinion on the issue of changing roll-out obligation for telecom players. The TRAI had suggested roll out obligation based on population whereby operators would be required to cover all areas with more than 10,000 people within two years and 2,000-5,000 people in four years.
Under the existing rules, operators are required to cover geographical area irrespective of the population. The DoT panel had rejected TRAI's views on grounds that most of the operators have already completed the current obligations and, therefore, it would be legally untenable to change the norms.
The Commission has agreed with most other recommendations made by the DoT internal panel. For example, the TRAI had sought powers to scrutinise spectrum usage by Government agencies such as the defence forces. The Commission has agreed with the DoT panel views that TRAI should only look at spectrum use by telecom operators. The Commission has also ratified DoT panel's views that there was no need to set up a new fund to meet expenses related to spectrum re-farming. It has also accepted moving to a new licence regime whereby all licences will be unified and spectrum will be delinked from the licence.
The Commission has decided that the TRAI should give detailed guidelines on moving to the new regime including implementing the first-come-first-served policy for giving out unified licences.
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