The Cabinet led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday has cleared the proposal for telecom spectrum auction in various bands, likely to be conducted in next two months "The finalisation of spectrum auctions which was pending have been approved. The main issue of pricing of spectrum usage charge (SUC) has been also discussed," Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, told reporters on Wednesday in New Delhi.
Briefing the media on the outcome of the Cabinet meeting, he said a lot of consultation plus opinion of Attorney General have been discussed on the issues of SUC. Therefore, it was decided that 'all documents be sent to TRAI again so that we can use the SUC clearly', he added.
The Telecom Commission (TC) in its meeting on June 7 had proposed for a lower 3 per cent SUC from the operators' adjusted gross revenue (AGR) for all bands.
The government had in January 2014 decided to cap the SUC at a flat 5 percent for spectrum that was to be procured in future auctions.
Now, the SUC will be calculated using a weighted average formula based on the total spectrum holding. However, the proposal will be limited only to the upcoming auction. The Centre will decide later on user charges for auctions to be held in future.