Top telecom businessmen to meet on licence fee

NEW DELHI, Aug 19: Leading industrialists in the fray for providing cellular services in the country, will meet here tomorrow to discuss th...

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NEW DELHI, Aug 19: Leading industrialists in the fray for providing cellular services in the country, will meet here tomorrow to discuss the problems they are facing with respect to payment of the third year licence fees, due to be paid by December this year. The promoters/owners meeting to be held here tomorrow has been called by B K Modi, chairman of the Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI), and is likely to be attended by Shashi Ruia of the Essar group, Analjit Singh of Max-Hutchison, Sunil B. Mittal of Bharti Enterprises and Rajiv Chandrashekhar of the BPL group among others.

The cellular service providers have approached the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the Union Ministry of Finance to give them a two-year moratorium in the payment of licence fees for the third year which fall due at the end of the year. The industry has offered to pay the third year licence fees after a two year period along with interest in order to keep the Net Present Value (NPV) amount constant, which was the basis for evaluating the bids at the time the tenders were floated by the DoT for private participation in cellular services. The cellular operators in non-metro circles are required to pay Rs 2,016 crore by the end of the year as their third instalment.