An Inter-Ministerial Group (IMG) set up to look into the bleeding telecom sector is slated to meet operators this week, starting with officials of Reliance Communications and Aircel.

The IMG, according to a revised schedule, will meet RCom, Aircel, Tata and Reliance Jio Infocomm officials on Monday, followed by state-run BSNL and MTNL on Tuesday.

This will be followed by a meeting with Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular on Friday. This will be the final round of meetings between IMG and operators, sources close to the development told BusinessLine .

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will also be meeting telecom companies’ chief executive officers on Thursday. Last week, IMG wrote individually to all the telcos, seeking their income details (operating expenditure, net profit and average revenue per user among others) of the past three years. It had been studying the telcos’ financials between FY15 and FY17.

In a meeting in May, telcos had pushed for a lower licence fee and voiced their concerns over the financial health of the industry.

The operators suggested, among other things, a reduction of licence fee to 1-5 per cent from present 8 per cent, cut in spectrum usage charges to 0-3 per cent from 4.8 per cent, and a raise in spectrum instalment payments period to 18 years from the present eight.

The IMG — set up by the Ministry of Communications to look into policy reforms and strategic interventions — has to submit its recommendations in three months. The panel includes various officials of the Department of Telecommunications, Department of Financial Services, Department of Economic Affairs and Department of Revenue.

The industry had said the sector is bleeding with debt at about ₹8,00,000 crore, annual interest payment of telcos at about ₹78,000 crore and financials such as EBITDA down to around ₹50,000 crore.