The agency said it is still awaiting clarification from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on various issues related to 2G spectrum allocation.
CBI Friday told a Delhi court there were contradictions in various TRAI stands on spectrum allocation contradictory: CBI to courtstands, including the one as per which it says it did not consider the telecom services and spectrum as a source of revenue.
CBI said this in the court of Special Judge OP Saini while submitting the TRAI report to the court in response to the demand by former Telecom Minister A Raja and other accused in the case to bring it on the court's record.
The agency said it is still awaiting clarification from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on various issues related to 2G spectrum allocation.
The investigating agency said the August 20 letter, written by the regulator to it, was not in consonance with the recommendations of the expert committee which was constituted to determine annual value of the spectrum.
"It is also relevant to mention that the forwarding letter of TRAI is not in consonance with the recommendations of the expert committee. CBI had sought in its letter dated January 19, 2011, the spectrum prices with effect from 2001 to 2008 on annual basis on technical and commercial parameters by the expert committee already working on such issues.
"The attention of TRAI is, therefore, drawn to the aforesaid contradictions and facts and TRAI is requested to revert back on the issue after considering the aforementioned facts," CBI, in its August 29 letter to TRAI, had said.
The agency told the court that it was still waiting for the response from the telecom regulator.
"In response to the TRAI letter dated August 20, 2011 and the said TRAI report, CBI has sent a letter dated August 29, 2011 to the Secretary TRAI for further clarifications. Reply is awaited," the agency said.
Though CBI filed TRAI's report that tentatively assessed the annual value of spectrum from 2001 to 2008 as an additional document in the case it sought a week's time for filing its reply on the report of the Ministry of Law and Justice in which they have clarified the definition of the word 'associate' as per clause 8 of Unified Access Services Licences guidelines.
The court allowed CBI's plea seeking time and listed the matter for arguments, if any, on TRAI's report for September 15, the day when the court is also slated to pronounce its order on framing of charges against 17 accused in the case including Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi.
Besides the TRAI report, CBI also submitted two letters containing the communications between the agency and the regulatory body regarding investigation into the 2G case.
In a letter written to CBI on August 20 this year, TRAI Secretary RK Arnold had said that in 2000, the regulator had determined that entry fee for the spectrum should be decided through a multi-stage bidding process.
"Throughout its recommendations from October 2003 till August 2007, TRAI never recommended auction methodology," the TRAI secretary said in his letter to CBI's DIG SK Palsania.
TRAI had written the letter to CBI in reply to the January 19, 2011, request of the agency to the telecom regulator to ask its expert committee to work out the annual spectrum prices for all telecom circles between 2001 and 2008.
The TRAI Secretary, in his letter, said the report contains a range of figures and it does not give precise value of spectrum for 2001-2008 and the range of values given is based on assumptions.
The TRAI letter said "the Committee, in the concluding paragraph of the report, has stated that it is not possible to predict with certainty the precise values of spectrum that would have emerged in an auction."
"TRAI repeatedly held the view that telecom services and spectrum should not be treated as a source of revenue for the government," said the TRAI's letter.
The letter further said the regulatory body had never recommended auctioning of the spectrum or revision of the entry fee for new players.
"It is against this background that TRAI did not recommend, including in August 2007, auction methodology nor did it recommend any increase in the entry fee for new players by way of indexation or otherwise," it said.
The letter added TRAI, similarly, did not recommend any price for spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz except in August 2007, where too additional charges were recommended only for spectrum beyond 10 MHz.
TRAI also communicated to CBI that Unified Access Service licencing regime was introduced in November 2003 and its recommendations always kept in view the need for growth of the telecom sector including in semi-urban and rural areas, the need for maintaining the level-playing field against the backdrop of entry of new players from time to time and the need to ensure that prices of telecom services were affordable by the customers".
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