Infra service providers in telecom oppose licence fee

Infrastructure service providers in the telecom sector such as tower companies and optical fibre cable providers on Monday strongly opposed the proposed licence fee on them.

Infrastructure service providers in the telecom sector such as tower companies and optical fibre cable providers on Monday strongly opposed the proposed licence fee on them.

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In a meeting with the union communications and IT minister Kapil Sibal and the senior officials of the department of telecommunications (DoT), the industry representatives said that any licence fee on them will lead to double taxation as the telecom operators already pay up to 10% of their annual revenue as licence fee.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has proposed that the infrastructure service providers should also be brought under the purview of unified licensing regime and should pay a licence fee.

The issue of potential arbitrage of revenue was also discussed during the meeting.