In the wake of telecom minister Kapil Sibal?s announcement that everyone would have to pay for spectrum according to a market determined price, the new operators or the ones allotted licences by former minister A Raja are likely to pay a bulk of around Rs 36,000 crore for the next tranche of 1.8 Mhz of spectrum. This is if the formula of linking the 2G spectrum with 3G prices announced by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai) in May 2010 is applied.
Trai is expected to give a final pricing formula shortly and if it departs from its earlier one, then the numbers would change. Sibal on Saturday announced the broad contours of his New Telecom Policy 2011 under which the older operators or the ones who have spectrum beyond 6.2 Mhz would have to cough up Rs 14,557 crore and the newer ones or the ones who currently hold spectrum up to 4.4 Mhz would have to pay Rs 36,424 crore for reaching the 6.8 Mhz level.
Among the new operators, Uninor would have to pay the highest at Rs 6,030 crore since it has licence for 22 circles. The dual technology operators such as Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices come next at Rs 5,989 and Rs 5,545 crore.
The older operators like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular would together have to pay around Rs 14,557 crore for spectrum beyond 6.2 Mhz. Of them Airtel would have to pay the highest at Rs 3,498 crore followed by the state-run BSNL which would have to shell out Rs 3,040 crore. Vodafone would have to pay Rs 2,669 crore and MTNL Rs 2,669 crore.
While drawing the broad policy contours of the NTP 2011 Sibal had said that in future the government would delink the spectrum from the telecom licence. While anyone can acquire the telecom licence for a nominal fee, in order to provide the wireless services the telecom licence holder would have to purchase the spectrum at a market price.