New Delhi: The government on Wednesday rejected the offers of mobile operators Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular to pay money for additional spectrum, saying the companies cannot submit the amount unless it was asked for.
"How can you offer the money when there is no order?" Communications Minister A Raja told reporters when asked about the proposals by GSM-based mobile players Bharti Airtel and Idea for paying money to get additional airwaves.
Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Airtel, the country's biggest mobile operator, had offered to pay Rs 2,650 crore as 'initial
bid', while rival GSM service provider Idea had proposed to submit Rs 1,651 crore for getting the frequency.
Raja had on Wednesday also made it clear that spectrum for second generation (2G) services would not be auctioned so as to maintain level playing field between new and existing service providers.
"We cannot adopt auctioning route for existing 2G spectrum due to legal barriers. But for the next generation
mobile services (3G), the government has already announced a policy that frequency will be allocated on the basis of auction," he said on the sidelines of India Telecom 2007 meet.
Suo moto bids by Bharti Airtel followed by Idea Cellular for 4.4 MHz additional spectrum had raised speculations that whether the government would consider this as a policy regime.
Raja has been maintaining that auctioning of 2G spectrum would create a level-playing field in favour of existing GSM operators and thus any such decision may not stand legal scrutiny.
The minister said spectrum needs to be allocated on the basis of real competition and in a transparent manner.
When asked how the government would generate revenues as pointed out by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the minister said, "We already have annual license fee based on percentage of Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) and we are also going to auction spectrum for 3G services."
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