Cellcos look to stop refarming

The heads of Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular have sought intervention from India’s Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to ensure that the cellcos are not forced to migrate to 1800MHz spectrum. According to Telecom Lead, the operators claimed that if the costs of investment in spectrum and refarming were passed on to the consumer, it would result in an average tariff increase of INR0.64 (USD0.011) per minute. The trio said that the cost to cellcos for migration would be around INR547.40 billion.