Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular may have to pay Rs 4,000 crore each for having overdrawn cellular services beyond 6.2Mhz.

The license dose not permit them to use more than 6.2 MHz in each circle and a one time fee is being imposed on the operators, for overusing the services. Mr A Raja, the Communication and IT Minister said on Tuesday "the issue was being discussed with the Finance Ministry and a decision on the exact quantum of the fee and the method of calculation will be announced by October".

Although, such a limit has been fixed, some of the operators like Bharti Airtel have been given up to 12 MHz based on the subscriber numbers. But if the proposal of charging money for each unit of spectrum bandwidth beyond 6.2 MHz like Rs 80 crore  for Metros and circle A states, Rs 40 crore for circle B states and Rs 20 crore for circle C states is accepted, Airtel may  have to release a total of 1,600 crore. But there is another proposal of charging a flat fee of 266 crore for each unit of spectrum irrespective of the area. In such a case Bharti shall have to pay over Rs 4,000 crore.The other bigger player Vodafone and Idea may have to pay a lesser amount as they do not own as much spectrum as Airtel.

While there are other proposals, the DoT has suggested an across -the-board increase in the annual spectrum charges by two percent of the annual gross revenues (AGR) of the operators. While the Finance ministry is propagating that Rs 1,651 crore fee was fixed in 2001, entitling 4.4 MHz of start-up spectrum, which works out to Rs 375 crore per MHz, and if the aggregate gross revenue has increased approximately 3.5 times then the telecoms must pay 3.5 times of Rs 375 crore which works out to be Rs 1,312 crore for every MHz.