In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, Milind Deora, minister of state for communications and IT has said that the operators owe government about Rs 96 million as licence fee and spectrum charges.
Bharti Airtel and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited owe Rs 32.75 billion and Rs 20.92 billion respectively as licence fee and spectrum charges to the government. Reliance Communications and Vodafone India owe Rs 16.58 billion and Rs 11.22 billion. Players like Tata Teleservices Limited and Idea Cellular have to pay Rs 4.58 and 4.28 billion respectively as licence fee and spectrum charges to the government.
According to Deora, the government has also imposed penalties amounting to Rs 21.99 billion on account of outstanding spectrum usage charges and the licence fee. For the financial year 2012-13, the government earned a total of Rs 68.89 billion as spectrum usage charges from the operators. Out of this, government got Rs 17.06 billion from the 2G spectrum auction and another Rs 85.40 billion as licence fee from the operators for the first three quarters of the financial year 2013.
Further, GSM operators owe the government about Rs 231.77 billion as one-time spectrum charges for holding additional spectrum beyond 4.4 MHz.
