Top executives of leading GSM companies — Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and Uninor — have asked the Prime Minister’s Office, members of EGoM on telecom and the Department of Telecom (DoT) to implement a uniform annual spectrum fee of 1 per cent across the industry to ensure success of the auction starting January 23.
“Implement a flat SUC (spectrum usage charge) before the upcoming auction. In case the same is not immediately possible, apply a uniform SUC to all technologies, example, all LTE (4G) technology deployment across any spectrum band should attract same current SUC of 1 per cent,” the executives said in a joint letter.
The spectrum usage charge, which is levied annually by the government as percentage of revenue earned by telecom companies from telecom services, varies between 3 and 8 per cent in case of mobile operators.
