The new recommendations spelled out by regulator, TRAI has resulted in a panicky scenario in the country with the stakeholders including stock exchanges giving a thumbs down to the guidelines. The recommendations as reported earlier by TelecomTiger work out strongly against GSM incumbents including Bharti Airtel which many analysts feel has landed at the wrong end of the recommendations.

The company has strong reasons to complain since inspite of contributing maximum to government in terms of annual licence fees and spectrum fees year after year, it turned up at the losing end of the recommendations and will now have to shell out significantly more.

TRAI’s recently published report on financial analysis of operators reveal that Bharti Airtel was the highest contributor to the exchequer in terms of quarterly licence fees paid for the period ending March, 2010. The company had paid Rs.555.69 crore for licence fee alone. In fact  such an analysis for the last so many years reflect that Bharti Airtel has consistently contributed the highest in terms of licence fee payments.

The new recommendations however have left the company hugely disappointed.

“The latest recommendations by the TRAI for allocation of 2G spectrum are shocking, arbitrary and retrograde. They overturn all existing policies of DoT for the last 15 years, recommendations made by various government committees and even TRAI’s own earlier recommendations. Besides, these are against all existing global norms for spectrum allocation and efficiency,” said the company.

Bharti Airtel stated that the recommendations were biased towards select operators whose contribution to telecom growth in the country has been negligible.

“Over the years, operators like us have brought services at the lowest tariffs in the world,  to the door steps of the common man and connected 85% of India’s population, including 4.4 lakh villages. We have invested over Rs. 70,000 crores to build networks and services and have contributed thousand of crores to the exchequer in form of license, spectrum fee and other levies. In terms of spectrum charges, we have contributed up to 10 times more per MHz than many other operators.”

The company said that it hopes the DoT and the government will take a rational approach and summarily reject “these arbitrary, impractical and perverse recommendations.”