DoT rejects TRAI proposals for tower company licence fees

Telecom Tiger is reporting that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI’s) recent proposals that telecom infrastructure companies should be the subject of licence fees have been rejected by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). It is understood that one of the DoT’s possible reasons for rejecting the plans is that an independent study conducted by the regulator had established that, despite telcos splitting off tower businesses into separate companies, there was little impact to the government’s revenues; the TRAI had argued that a licence fee was called for as it believed the government was losing out financially.