Mobile service provider Videocon Telecom on Monday said spectrum usage charges should be 1 percent of AGR on spectrum procured through auction to recover administrative charges.
BWA (broadband wireless access) license holders — Reliance Jio Infocomm, Bharti Airtel, Aircel, etc. — currently offers 1 percent of AGR to the government as SUC.
In a statement, Videocon Telecom said lower SUC rates for new players will be an incentive to ensure level playing with incumbents.
Spectrum was allocated administratively where there was no payment made for spectrum allocation by any operator, hence there was a logic behind charging slab based SUC in accordance to amount of spectrum allocated.
In the current regime, spectrum is allocated through an open market mechanism to derive the exact market value of the spectrum. It is fair that SUC charges should levied only to the extent to cover the administrative expenses towards the management of the spectrum.
Under the current SUC policy, charges are levied according to the amount of airwaves held by the operators, and are charged between 3 percent to 8 percent basis the spectrum allocation. The Incumbents who are holding large amount of spectrum will end up paying SUC at the upper end of the range.
TRAI has recommended uniform spectrum usage charge (SUC) of 3 percent to 5 percent of revenue earned by mobile operators from telecom services from April 1, 2014. The uniform SUC, if implemented as per recommendations made by TRAI, will be favorable to the incumbents such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, Idea Cellular, etc.