Government considering long-term measures to boost health of stressed telecom sector

The government is considering a slew of long-term measures to improve the health of the debt-laden telecom sector, which includes prospectively redefining adjusted gross revenue (AGR) to exclude ‘non-telecom’ items and allowing telcos to surrender unused spectrum for a small penalty.

Other measures being discussed with the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) include reduction in licence fees (LF) and spectrum usage charges (SUC) and phasing out bank guarantees, senior government officials say.