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New Delhi, Sep 28: leads to the notion that a scarce resource like spectrum is being traded by taking it cheap from the government and then selling it at a higher price.
The pan-India UASL comes for Rs 1,651 crore, a price discovered in 2003, and operators get a start-up spectrum of 4.4 MHz bundled with it. After that subsequent chunks of spectrum are allotted as and when operators reach a certain subscriber base.
This is remarkably different from the practice followed in other countries. For instance, in the US, spectrum is not bundled with the licence but is separately auctioned. Communications & IT minister A Raja has resisted auctioning 2G spectrum on the ground that existing operators got it without an auction so going in for a mid-course correction would amount to dual-principle and may lead to litigation.
On revising upwards the Rs 1,651 crore entry licence fee, DoT has maintained that the Cabinet had approved it in 2003 and subsequently even the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has not suggested hiking it....
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