The Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on telecom, headed by finance minister P Chidambaram, is likely to take a final call on Monday on the contentious issue of spectrum fee and long-awaited mergers and acquisitions norms.
"EGoM will meet on Monday. Hopefully a final decision should be taken on spectrum usage charge. Merger and acquisition guidelines are almost ready but were not released pending a legal opinion. A final decision is also expected on the same," an official source told PTI.
Meanwhile, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has extended the last date to withdraw applications for the upcoming spectrum auction to January 28 from January 27 earlier.
The inter-ministerial panel Telecom Commission (TC) on Saturday recommended three options for levying annual spectrum usage charge (SUC) on telecom operators.
GSM firms such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular have locked horns with Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio Infocomm following the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) recommendation of a uniform SUC.
The charge is levied annually by the government as a percentage of revenue earned from telecom services.
It currently ranges from 3 to 8 percent for mobile operators, while for firms with Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum such as Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd and Tikona, the fee is 1 percent. Read more..
"EGoM will meet on Monday. Hopefully a final decision should be taken on spectrum usage charge. Merger and acquisition guidelines are almost ready but were not released pending a legal opinion. A final decision is also expected on the same," an official source told PTI.
Meanwhile, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has extended the last date to withdraw applications for the upcoming spectrum auction to January 28 from January 27 earlier.
The inter-ministerial panel Telecom Commission (TC) on Saturday recommended three options for levying annual spectrum usage charge (SUC) on telecom operators.
GSM firms such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular have locked horns with Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio Infocomm following the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) recommendation of a uniform SUC.
The charge is levied annually by the government as a percentage of revenue earned from telecom services.
It currently ranges from 3 to 8 percent for mobile operators, while for firms with Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum such as Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd and Tikona, the fee is 1 percent. Read more..
Source: Hindi News
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