The relief given to telecom companies in 1999 by the then National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government by moving them from the fixed licence to the revenue sharing model caused a loss of over Rs43,523 crore to the public exchequer, the Lok Sabha was informed on Wednesday.
According to the fixed licence fee, the firms were supposed to pay Rs58,354.62 crore but the license fee actually paid by the companies stood at Rs14,830.70 crore due to the migration package, Minister of State for Communications and IT Milind Deora said in a written reply.
Therefore, the difference in the fixed and actually paid license fee stood at Rs43,523.92 crore.
The migration package was a one-time measure to migrate the licensees to the NTP 1999 regime.
Subsequent to this, a new category of UAS (Unified Access Services) license was introduced and most of the CMTS (Cellular Mobile Telephone Service) licensees, except BSNL and MTNL, migrated to the new regime.