Sources said that with the strong dissent note, chances of the TRAI recommendations of five per cent revenue share from GMPCS companies being approved by the department of telecommunications (DoT) were minimal.

The recommendations were sent to the DoT last week, which is supposed to take final view soon. Citing the earlier refusal of DoT to accept a similar revenue share from paging companies, sources said, "There is no reason to allow a premium service like GMPCS to have a free ride at the cost of the nation."

The members have said that the financial viability of GMPCS projects works out to be better in comparison with cellular mobile companies. In their dissent note submitted to TRAI chairman Justice Sodhi, the members have said that a GMPCS provider would get an internal rate of return (IRR) in excess of 18 per cent based on 16 per cent revenue sharing.

Significantly, the note states: "If at all we have to emulate the example of another country, it should be of China whose tele-density is comparable to that of India, rather than European/North American countries." The note adds that the licence fee for GMPCS works out to 25 per cent of the gross revenue in China, while Thailand levies a similar percentage on mobile services.The members feel that a reasonable percentage of gross revenue has not come in the way of telecom development in these countries. The note points out, "a regulator acts as an economic policeman in these countries and carries out some kind of rate of return regulations, so as to ensure normal profits for the operators and a reasonable revenue to the state."

The note adds that it is not appropriate to make the licence fee regime too soft for the private sector in light of the limited resources of available with the exchequer and the burgeoning fiscal deficit.

"It should be noted that GMPCS operators are multinationals, whose constellation of satellites is shared by a very large number of countries and the national service provider is able to cover the whole country with relatively small investment in the ground segment," the note adds.The note also says that the percentage of revenue cannot be equated to fixed cost. In addition, the members have also stressed that the new telecom policy (NTP) did not envisage charging of only the cost to administer the licence as a basis for arriving at revenue sharing figures.

The note adds that in the on-going study being conducted by TRAI over the past 10 months, the method adopted to determine the revenue percentage for cellular sector is based on analysis of the projects financial viability.