Days after the supreme court ordered the cancellation of 122 second generation (2G) licences, telecom minister Kapil Sibal on Wednesday shared policy guidelines on issues such as delinking spectrum with licences and enhancing the spectrum limit.

All future licences will be unified licences and allocation of spectrum is delinked from the licence — although the implementation of the policy is likely only after the telecom regulatory authority of India (Trai) has given its guidelines and terms and conditions.

The minister said that spectrum sharing will be permitted under automatic route; there will be a uniform licence fee (an annual fee all operators pay to obtain the licence) at 8 percent of the adjusted gross revenue of the licensee; and the licences will be renewed after 10 years.

According to Sibal, henceforth, all telecom service providers would now be allowed to hold higher spectrum of up to10 megahertz (MHz) from the current prescribed limit of 6.2 MHz. It is expected to help the operators offer quality services. “The prescribed limit on spectrum assigned to a service provider will be 2x8 MHz for GSM technology for all service areas other than Delhi and Mumbai where it will be 2x10 MHz," the telecom minister said.

Additionally, the old GSM operators holding spectrum of up to 6.2 MHz band will have to pay a one-time charge for the additional spectrum although ambiguity remains on whether the said charge will be beyond the new prescribed limit. In fact, even on the issue of pricing of spectrum Sibal said that the decision on such matters will be taken at a later stage.

Decision on other key issues like mergers and acquisitions and migration to the new unified license regime was also taken at the conference in Delhi.