Centre to Supreme Court: Telecom companies owe over Rs 92,000 crore as licence fees

NEW DELHI: Leading private telecom players like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and state-owned MTNL and BSNL have a pending licence fee outstanding of over Rs 92,000 crore till date, the Centre has told the Supreme Court.

In an affidavit filed in the apex court, the department of telecom (DoT) said that, according to calculations, the total amount which has to be recovered from all the telecom firms accrues to Rs 92,642 crore as on date.

According to the New Telecom Policy, telecom licencees are required to share a percentage of their adjusted gross revenue (AGR) with the government as annual licence fee (LF). In addition, mobile telephone operators were also required to pay spectrum usage charges (SUC) for the use of radio frequency spectrum allotted to them.