Telecom department may levy weighted spectrum usage charge for all airwaves held by telecom operators

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) could levy a weighted spectrum usage charge (SUC) for all airwaves held by telecom operators, changing its previous stand that revenue arising out of broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum would attract a separate 1% annual fee for using those airwaves. 
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A DoT committee, unable to find technically perfect ways to segregate revenues arising out of the broadband wireless spectrum and revenue from other spectrum bands of 900 MHz/1800 MHz, has proposed that the government charge a weighted average of the total BWA spectrum held by an operator and total airwaves in the other bands of 900/1800 (with weights being quantity of spectrum held) in order to arrive at the specific charge each operator would pay. Cellular Operators Association of India secre .. 

"Quantity might not be the correct measure. It could shift the charge towards the larger spectrum holding, which in this case is towards the 1% charge on the BWA airwaves," he said. He added that rather than coming up with such questionable and complex calculations, the government must go by what the regulator has proposed and the industry has long demanded — a flat SUC on all kinds of spectrum. "Be it 1% or 3%, just make it a flat charge". 

io is the single largest and the only pan-India holder of a 20 MHz chunk of spectrum in the 2300 MHz band, popularly known as the BWA spectrum or the 4G spectrum. Jio and Bharti AirtelBSE -0.09 % — which hold BWA spectrum in only eight circles — together gave alternate methods to the telecom department on how the revenue from different bands of spectrum could be differentiated. 

However, the telecom department has found the methodologies complex and short-lived as newer technologies in .. 

Reliance Jio Infocomm has historically opposed ..