Videocon has requested the government to offset entry fee for the operators whose licences were cancelled earlier this year in case they win spectrum in the forthcoming auction.
According to Videocon, the government must offset the entry fee as woell as the interest paid by the company for its 2G licences which were subsequently cancelled early this year.
Videocon?s 2G licences were among the 122 licences cancelled by the Supreme Court order in February 2012. As per the operator, it paid the government about Rs 15.07 billion for its pan India 2G licence in 2008. Further, it had invested Rs 88 billion towards capital and operating expenditure for setting up its telecom network.
The operator has requested the government to allow it to use the bank guarantees that it had submitted to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) for its 21 licences. It wants to use these bank guarantees for acquisition of new licences if it wins spectrum in the forthcoming 2G auction.
Earlier this week, an empowered group of ministers on telecom headed by P Chidambaram, Minister of Finance took the decision to refund the entry fee paid by all the operators whose licences were cancelled by the Supreme Court.
However, DoT is yet to take a decision on bank guarantees submitted by the nine operators whose licences were cancelled.
