The Comptroller & Auditor General has asked the Department of Telecom to give details of the roaming agreements signed by telecom companies to offer 3G services in areas where they did not have spectrum.

The CAG is investigating whether the deals, which has been termed illegal by the DoT, has caused loss to the national exchequer.

The CAG has sought the agreements signed by the telecom companies to determine if they were paying revenue share to the Government as per the licence conditions.

Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular had got into this roaming arrangement because neither of them had pan-India 3G spectrum.

Without spectrum

While mobile licences allow operators to enter into roaming agreements, in the case of 3G, the three operators have gone a step ahead and are selling connections even in areas where they do not have spectrum.

This has been made possible because the three operators entered into an agreement wherein an operator that does not have 3G spectrum in a region offers services riding on another player’s spectrum. For example, in Madhya Pradesh, neither Bharti Airtel nor Vodafone has 3G spectrum, but they offer services on Idea Cellular’s spectrum.

Two categories

According to the DoT, this has created two different sets of violators — operators that sought others’ spectrum and another set of companies that acted as givers. While the DoT has already slapped financial penalty on the operators that sought spectrum, a fresh set of show-cause notice is being readied for players that gave the radio frequency allocated to them.

> thomas.thomas@thehindu.co.in