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The Supreme Court on Friday vacated an earlier appellate tribunal order against Reliance Communications (RCom) on differential spectrum pricing, which was upheld by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
The move will help in speeding up the asset monetisation deal with Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJio).
The order, which favours RCom, vacated a Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) judgment passed on August 3, 2018, and communicated the same to the licensor, DoT.
When contacted, lawyers representing the parties confirmed the development, while RCom declined to comment.
RCom had moved the Supreme Court seeking to strike down or quash clause No. 8 of DoT guidelines for trading of spectrum by telecom operators, including RCom. The guidelines dated October 12, 2015, imposes a pre-condition of payment of difference in March 2013 auction price and the latest auction price of the spectrum held, RCom had said in its petition.
In its plea, RCom had also urged the court to direct DoT to permit trading of its spectrum without levying any differential charges.
The case dates back to mid-2015 when the Anil Ambani group company acquired Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL), a joint venture between Russia’s Sistema and India’s Shyam Group that provided CDMA services under the brand MTS.
Following the deal, licences and spectrum held by SSTL, were transferred to RCom.
Later in October 2015, DoT issued trading guidelines but stated that trading of spectrum in 800 MHz acquired in the auction held in March 2013 would be permitted only if the differential of the latest auction price and the March 2013 auction price is paid on a pro-rata basis.
This has to be paid for the balance period of spectrum use.
RCom had moved TDSAT against this order, but earlier this year the appellate tribunal upheld the DoT guidelines. Then RCom moved the Supreme Court.
SSTL had acquired spectrum in 1800 MHz, 900 MHz and 800 MHz bands in the 2013 auction for all the 8 telecom circles the company had operations in.
On December 28, Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJio) emerged as the white knight to acquire the wireless assets of RCom, controlled by his younger sibling, Anil.
RJio, a wholly-owned subsidiary of RIL, emerged as the successful bidder in a two-stage bidding process.
RCom received the first tranche of about ₹800 crore as asset monetisation in the first week of this month, sources had told BusinessLine on Monday.
This was mainly for the towers, optical fibre cable network, certain spectrum and Media Convergence Nodes, they added.
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