Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Hardening its position against the government,Vodafone today said that a proposed one-time fee for airwaves beyond 6.2 MHz would violate the terms of its licence contract.
Earlier this month,the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Trai repeated a recommendation that spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz be charged six times its current price.
TV Ramachandran,regulatory expert at the multinational network operator,has written to the Department of Telecommunications DoT that the spectrum licence did not allow the government to charge the fee.
Ramachandran said: Any decision to impose a one-time fee for spectrum already assigned to operators will be legally untenable as it will be in violation of terms of the licence and against the agreed terms of migration to a unified access licence.
On Monday,he said Vodafone would wait for the governments final decision before deciding if it would move court. Weve got contractual rights. Well see what follows. Vodafones licence to provide unified access services says: Any additional bandwidth,if allotted subject to availability and justification,shall attract additional licence fee as revenue share typically 1 per cent additional revenue share if bandwidth allocated is up to 6.2 MHz.
Ramachandran said placing a one-time charge above the additional licence fee would break the terms of the contract.
He wrote to the DoT that the regulators views on pricing,which assumed that 2G spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz was more efficient than 3G airwaves,were deeply flawed.
