Telecom industry writes to regulator to make usage charge uniform

Telecom industry stakeholders urge uniform spectrum usage charge

April 8, 2016

The COAI urged the government to charge SUC at a uniform rate of 3 percent for the entire spectrum

[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]O[/dropcap]n Thursday, The telecom industry stakeholders have written to the sector regulator on requesting uniform spectrum usage charge (SUC) rate for all operators across bands and technologies.

A letter written by Rajan S.Mathews, director general, Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI) to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) chairman R.S.Sharma said , “it is requested that there is an urgent need to reduce the SUC rate for all existing spectrum assigned to the operators to a low and a uniform rate across bands and technologies,”

To reduce SUC rate from 5 percent to 3 percent the telecom industry body was welcomed the recent government proposal.

In infrastructure the high SUC burden on operators are impacted adversely on the investment, said the COAI and also said that a uniform rate of SUC will simplify the calculations and remove all arbitrages and ambiguities.

For the entire spectrum the COAI urged the government to charge SUC at a uniform rate of 3 percent. The letter also stated that; further reduce the SUC rate in a phased manner to a uniform rate of 1 percent.

“The letter stated that industry’s payout for SUC has increased at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.22 percent from Rs.3,602 crore [$ 541.43 Million] to Rs.7,316 crore [$ 1099.70 Million] from 2010 to 2015. At present, the industry is under the debt of around Rs.3.5 lakh crore [$ 52609.82 Million]

Notes:
1. IANS
2. The conversion rate used in this article is 1 US Dollar = 66.53 Rupees.