Airtel, Idea get breather on one-time spectrum fee

In some relief to India’s leading telco Bharti Airtel the Bombay High Court has stayed the one-time spectrum fee imposed by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) for the auction of 2G spectrum. The court has granted Airtel the stay till February 24. Early this month DoT began issuing demand notices to the operators. 

Meanwhile, Idea Cellular, Aircel also got a breather after the court on Monday stayed the imposition of the one-time fee on the telco till March 1, 2013. 

EGoM headed the finance minister P Chidambaram had recommended that incumbent operators would pay one-time fee for spectrum they hold above 4.4MHz. 

The cabinet had decided that for all spectrum holdings beyond 4.4 MHz (GSM), a onetime charge be levied prospectively upon the existing operators at 2012 auction determined price. The date of applicability of the charge shall be the date of commencement of the first quarter following the date of the Cabinet decision. 

For spectrum held above 6.2 (GSM), a one-time charge would be levied from July 2008 onwards. There will be two prices. The price, pro-rated for the period July 2008 up to the date of applicability of auction determined price, would be the 2001 entry fee divided by 6.2, duly indexed using State Bank of India Prime Lending Rate (SBI PLR).

Source: http://cablequest.org/news/telecom-news/item/939-airtel-idea-get-breather-on-one-time-spectrum-fee.htmlSource: http://cablequest.org/news/telecom-news/item/939-airtel-idea-get-breather-on-one-time-spectrum-fee.html