Reliance Jio, Airtel and Vi’s heads meet telecom minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, raise AGR issue

Reliance Jio, Airtel, Vi (Vodafone Idea) and other telecom operators raised the issue of adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues and rectification of calculation errors with communications minister Jyotiraditya Scindia at a meeting recently. According to a report by ET, the telecom companies urged Scindia to maintain the current contractual agreement between the government and telcos for license grants.The meeting was attended by Reliance Jio chairman Akash Ambani and managing director Pankaj Pawar, vice-chairman of Bharti Enterprises Rajan Mittal and Vodafone Idea MD Akshaya Moondra, among others.
The report quotes an unnamed official who said “The telcos said licences can be converted into authorisation, but the agreement should continue, so as to provide regulatory certainty,”. “The issue (recompute of AGR dues) was raised by Vodafone Idea and all other operators supported it,” said another official.

During the meeting, Jio, Airtel and Vi also reiterated their demand to bring over-the-top (OTT) communication players like WhatsApp and Telegram under the regulatory fold. Earlier this year, the telcos demanded to bring OTT players under some sort of regulatory control as a majority of traffic, including commercial traffic, has largely shifted to such players.
Minister assured telcos
As per the report, Scinidia is believed to have assured the telcos that the AGR matter would be examined by the department of telecommunications (DoT). The minister also undertook another meeting with original equipment manufacturers.
The meetings come amidst a Supreme Court’s rejection of the curative petitions of Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel on recomputing AGR dues. With the latest SC order, Vodafone Idea is now left facing over Rs 70,000 crore in AGR dues, while Airtel faces around Rs 44,000 crore in AGR dues.