The Telecom Commission is in favour of imposing an 8.5 per cent uniform licence fee on all telecom operators. Operators currently pay between 6 per cent and 10 per cent of their annual revenues as licence fee.
Prior to this, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had recommended reducing the licence fee to a uniform 6 per cent. However, a panel established by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) raised this figure to 8.5 per cent.
Thereafter, the Telecom Commission rejected TRAI?s suggestion and upheld the committee?s views pertaining to this issue.
The Telecom Commission also plans to seek legal opinion on the issue of changing roll-out obligations for telecom players. TRAI had suggested framing roll out obligations based on the area?s 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 areas irrespective of the population. The DoT panel had rejected TRAI’s views on grounds that most of the operators have already fulfilled the current obligations and, therefore, it would be legally untenable to change the norms.
The Commission has also upheld most of the panel?s other recommendations. For example, TRAI had requested to increase its areas of jurisdiction to include examining spectrum usage by various government agencies. The Commission has said that TRAI should only examine telecom operators? spectrum usage.
Further, the Commission has said that establishing a new fund to cover the expenses related to spectrum re-farming was unnecessary. It has also promoted the panel?s suggestion of adopting a new licence regime, whereby all licences will be unified and spectrum will be delinked from the licence.
