Will govt meet FY14 revenue target via spectrum sale?

The government is confident of achieving the Rs 40,000 crore Budgeted target for telecom spectrum sale in the next financial year despite fiasco of last two spectrum sales, R Chandrashekhar, Department of Telecommunication Secretary said.

During 2012-13, the government miserably failed in selling airwaves spectrum several times. Many telecom analysts believe given the response in past few spectrum auction, finance minister's Rs 40,000 crore target for next fiscal seems like a pipe dream. 

In the current fiscal, the government has been able to garner Rs 13,000 crore so far, against revised spectrum revenue target of Rs 19,440.67 crore. In the 2G auction conducted today for 800 Mhz CDMA spectrum, only Sistema Shyam participated and won eight circle licenses for Rs 3639 crore.

2G auction: Sistema Shyam bags 8 circles, avoids Mumbai

In the first round of spectrum auction post cancellation of 2G licenses, the government could only raise about Rs 9,400 crore in last November. It had to cancel a second round of auction due to lack of response from GSM operators, even after lowering the bid price

However, Chandrashekhar believes that next fiscal will be different and the government is most likely to achieve spectrum revenue target.

"In the next year it is a combination of the normal revenue that is the spectrum usage charges and the licence fees and so on and the spectrum auction amounts, bare in mind that there are various auctions which are due and there is a 12 months period within which this will happen," Chandrashekhar said.

He further added that the government plans to conduct another round of auction for 20 circles. 

Loop telecom controversy

In another development, the Supreme Court has asked Department of Telecommunication's reply on Loop Telecom's plea on rollout penalty notice within two weeks, Chandrashekhar said.

Loop Telecom had applied to the Supreme Court against show cause notice it received from DoT for discontinuing operation in 21 circles, which also threatened to impose Rs1100 crore penalty for allegedly violating 2G spectrum license norms.

Loop Telecom was one of the companies whose licences for 2G spectrum were cancelled by the apex court in February 2012. Following the cancellation of its licences, the company had discontinued its services by proceeding to shut down its operations after duly porting out all its subscribers and had preferred not to go for the fresh auction.