Telecom tangle

The government has issued demand notices totalling over Rs 23,000 crore to telecom companies including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and BSNL, for the excess spectrum they hold beyond the prescribed limit.
The government is likely to get Rs 4,251.8 crore from retrospective charges, and Rs 18,925.8 from prospective charges for excess radiowaves held by mobile operators. In all, around Rs 23,177 crore is expected from levy of one-time spectrum fee.
State-owned BSNL will have to pay around Rs 6,912 crore, followed by Bharti Airtel —Rs 5,201 crore, Vodafone — Rs 3,599 crore, MTNL — Rs 3,205 crore, Idea Cellular — Rs 2,113 crore (includes Rs 231.5 crore of Spice), Aircel — Rs 1,365 crore (includes Rs 14 crore of Dishnet), Loop Mobile — Rs 606 crore and Reliance Communications - Rs 173 crore.
Initially, telecom firms were given 4.4 MHz spectrum along with licence for Rs 1,658 crore for pan-India operations and later they were entitled to get another 1.8 MHz on fulfilment of certain subscriber-base criteria.
In November, the government decided that the operators should pay for holding spectrum above 6.2 MHz retrospectively, from July 2008 to January 1, 2013.