The government has defended its allocation of 4G licences to Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited. This comes after the Supreme Court issued a notice to the centre on the basis of a PIL which stated that licenses were allotted to RJIL at one tenth of the reserve price fixed for 3G services. The PIL challenges the government’s March 2013 decision to allow RJIL to offer voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) services by paying Rs 16.58 billion.  It further states that allocation of 4G spectrum at this price led to a loss of Rs 228.42 billion to the exchequer.

The government, meanwhile, has stated that the Rs 16.58 billion was only a migration fee and carried no associated start-up spectrum with it. To ensure that there was a level-playing field, the government had decided to allow broadband wireless access (BWA) licensees to obtain the pan-India licence by paying entry fee of Rs 16.58 billion under the UAS license. The government felt that the 4G spectrum holders had already paid the market price and their entry into the new unified license regime should not be at a higher cost.