For the time being, telecom companies will not need to pay higher taxes to the government, which they earlier were supposed to pay from 1st April. The government's decision to hike the levy operators pay to use spectrum, the airwaves on which mobile signals travel, by up to 50%, was stayed by the telecom tribunal , TDSAT.

As of now, all the mobile services existing in the country are provided on 2G frequencies and telecom operators are required paying 2-6 % of their annual gross revenue, depending on the amount of spectrum they hold, as spectrum usage charges to the government.

The government had declared last month that it was hiking this levy by nearly 50%. It said that telcos will be charged 8 % of their revenues as spectrum usage fee in the coming financial year.

The GSM operators say that it is at the time when telecom regulator is looking into the issue makes the regulator's consultation prejudiced that DoT's recent move to hike 2G spectrum usage has arrived. Furthermore, due to this, GSM-based operators will have to deal with the brunt of the increase in spectrum fee.

As per the norms released last month, an increase by 1 pct would be introduced in the spectrum charges if the airwaves held by telcos were less than 8.2 MHz in the case of a GSM operators and 5 MHz for CDMA players.