In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Milind Deora, Minister of State for Communications and IT said that operators owe the government Rs 5.87 billion as licence fee and spectrum charges.
This amount includes Rs 365.7 million as licence fee and Rs 5.50 billion for spectrum charges.
Bharti airtel owes Rs 176.6 million as licence fee and Rs 1.29 billion as spectrum charges. Reliance Communications and Idea Cellular owe Rs 1.32 billion and Rs 279.4 million as spectrum charges, respectively, besides Spice Communications (Rs 32.9 million), Aircel (Rs 17.7 million) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (Rs 49.2 million).
Deora also said that apart from the entry fee charged by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) for granting cellular and UAS licences from 2001 onwards, no separate up-front charge has been levied for the allotment of 6.2 MHz of GSM or 5 MHz of CDMA spectrum to cellular licensees.
However, annual spectrum usage charges are being levied from these licencees as a percentage of adjusted gross revenue.
