Saturday 26 October 2013

DoT seeks nod to get tower firms under unified licensing

The telecom department (DoT) is seeking approval from the highest decision-making body of the communications ministry on including telecom tower providers under the unified licensing regime.
If cleared by the Telecom Commission, tower providers may have to pay a fee of about 8% of their adjusted gross revenue (AGR) which would add to the woes of the struggling industry that has been insisting that it is an essential infrastructure provider and hence be treated differently. 

Telecom tower providers are desperate for funds amid a rough patch in terms of lack of orders and finances as a slowdown in the sector and exit or scaling down of operations by some operators bite. 
Telecom tower providers currently do not pay any license fee but only fork out Rs 5,000 for getting registered as infrastructure providers under category I (IP - I) to establish and maintain passive infrastructures - dark fibre, right of way and towers - which can be leased out to carriers. 
The government estimates that major telecom tower companies earned about Rs 23,580 crore in revenue for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2011, and are growing at around 11.4% a year. At 8% license fee, the government stands to get Rs 1,900 crore a year. 
The internal note highlights that while the commission had chosen not to take a decision on this matter in its earlier meeting in February, due to a number of issues, it can do so now since many of them have been sorted out. 
For instance, telecom tower providers wanted exemption from the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion for keeping the foreign direct investment limit at 100% in a company. With the FDI limit in telecom sector being raised from 74% to 100%, this issue has been solved. 
The note however, adds that the issue of definition of AGR has to be revisited, for which a reference will be made to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the sector regulator.

Source:
http://cablequest.org/news/telecom-news/item/3361-dot-seeks-nod-to-get-tower-firms-under-unified-licensing.htmlSource: http://cablequest.org/news/telecom-news/item/3361-dot-seeks-nod-to-get-tower-firms-under-unified-licensing.html

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