The Department of Telecom has ignored Finance Ministry’s suggestion to raise the reserve price of spectrum for 3G mobile services to Rs 2,500 crore, saying the auction process would discover the best price.

“DoT has carefully considered the suggestion of the Ministry of Finance to raise the reserve price from Rs 2,200 crore to Rs 2,500 crore but maintained the status quo since the ascending order auction would in any case discover the price in consonance with market conditions, DoT sources said.

The finance ministry held a meeting with the senior officials of the Telecom Commission recently and raising the reserve price was one of the major issues discussed.

According to sources, DoT has already incorporated rest of the amendments suggested by the finance ministry.

The DoT has, however, suitably incorporated the change in the annual spectrum usage charge for 3G services and it would be at the rate of one per cent on the incremental revenue due to 3G mobile services.

On this also, the DoT is planning to have a detailed discussions with all the stakeholders like telecom operators for evolving a formula for fixation of annual spectrum charge. Sources close to the development said that DoT may consider segregation of revenues generated from 2G and 3G services separately to work out the annual spectrum usage charges. Sources said this would be necessary to maintain transparency in disclosing the revenues from their different services for working out annual spectrum usage charge and licence fee.