  In a letter to the telecom minister Kapil Sibal The Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers (AUSPI) has criticised DOT’s move to charge the DoT’s proposal to charge a one-time fee from existing telecom players for spectrum they hold calling it discriminatory. “illegal, violative of the licence conditions.
The industry lobby said that the move will and create more inequalities and discrimination among the existing operators. “Proposal of DoT to impose one time charge for the spectrum already held by the existing licencees is not only violative of the licence conditions, but is also discriminatory and such needs to be dropped”, the letter said.
It said that the proposal to charge for all spectrum held by telecom operators whose licences were not cancelled by the Supreme Court in the 2G scam will trigger widespread international default of billions of dollars.
DoT has proposed to charge for all spectrum held by existing telecom players at the rates which new telecom operators will pay in the auction of airwaves due to start in November.
Paid Existing telecom operators Rs 1,658 crore for spectrum alongwith pan-India licences while new telecom operator will have to pay minimum of Rs 14,000 crore for spectrum to operate across country.
AUSPI said that imposing charges up to 5 Mhz/6.2 Mhz (spectrum) clearly favours one set of operators who were early entrants and consequently have the shortest period to renewal.
“As security for the loans availed, companies have executed tripartite agreement with banks and government (DoT), under the loan facility agreement if any telecom licence is amended, modified or renewed in a manner or to extent which could be reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect, the same will treated as even of default” the letter said.
"According, if one time spectrum charge for remaining validity of licence is implemented, it will trigger an event of default and all lenders will immediately exercise their rights and call for immediate payment of all outstanding loans," AUSPI said. |