Call charge

New Delhi, Nov. 11: Third-generation (3G) mobile operators will have to pay 3 per cent of their revenue as spectrum charge.

Existing 2G players, who want to offer 3G services, will be charged 1 per cent more than the current rate, telecom secretary Siddhartha Behura said.

Telecom operators pay the government a percentage of their adjusted gross revenue (AGR) as annual spectrum charge to use radiowaves over which mobile calls travel.

After the latest levy, the spectrum fee for existing operators such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Reliance Communications will increase to 3-7 per cent, if they plan to offer 2G and 3G services.

At present, GSM players offering 2G services pay around 2-6 per cent of their AGR as a spectrum levy, while CDMA operators are charged 2 per cent of their revenue.

The new rates will come into effect from the second year of the launch of 3G services. The revised pricing proposals were cleared today by the Telecom Commission, the apex decision making body of the department of telecom (DoT).

The commission, however, did not taken any decision on the one-time spectrum fee for holding 2G spectrum beyond 6.2 megahertz.

Existing operators, especially the GSM players, are unhappy with the new levy.

“As 3G will account for only a small segment of our revenues initially, a flat 1 per cent increase will translate into a higher payout to the government,” said a GSM operator.

Globally, telecom companies shell out 0.1-5 per cent of their aggregate revenues for using airwaves. However, some countries do not charge any fee since the airwaves are acquired through a bidding process.

According to the 3G policy guidelines announced in August, telecom firms have to shell out 1 per cent of their revenues as a fee for using these frequencies.

However, this requires separation of the revenues earned from 2G and 3G services — a process which the DoT has been unable to formulate.