The government will decide if incumbent telecom operators like Airtel, Vodafone and Tata Teleservices have to pay a market-discovered price for the spectrum they currently hold. "Spectrum pricing policy is about what is the need to pay or not to pay (by the existing operators) as far as the spectrum they already hold is concerned," a source in the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said.
To create a level field between the incumbent and new operators, DoT has proposed that once the price of spectrum is discovered in the upcoming auction, the incumbent operators should be asked to pay the price for all the spectrum they currently hold. The source, however, added it would be up to the operators to decide if they wished to pay for the remaining period of their existing licences or get a new 20-year licence and pay like new operators. After change in the policy of spectrum assignment through auction, it is recommended that the discovered price be “applicable to incumbents right from zero onwards and not above 4.4 MHz as recommended by the Telecom Commission,” DoT said in a note submitted to different ministries for comments.