New Delhi: Reliance Jio Infocomm and Bharti Airtel have called on the government to cut the price of 5G spectrum in the run-up to the next auction, showing rare convergence on a vital issue at a time when the two telecom operators are locked in a bitter feud over interconnect usage charges (IUC). Vodafone Idea chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla , who spoke at the India Mobile Congress on Monday, as did senior Jio and Bharti Airtel executives, underlined the need for an “enabling regulatory environment” to ensure phone companies have the “necessary wherewithal to make commensurate investments to stay at the cutting edge oftechnology”.Rakesh Bharti Mittal, vice-chairman of Bharti Enterprises, holding company of Bharti Airtel, said at the event that the reserve price of 5G airwaves suggested by the telecom regulator “is seven times higher than global peers”. Jio director Mahendra Nahata backed Mittal and urged the government to “relook at 5G spectrum prices”, warning that “higher floor rates would lead to 5G networks becoming unviable and getting delayed”.Last year, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ( Trai ) had set Rs 492 crore a unit as the base rate for 5G airwaves in the 3.3-3.6 GHz bands, and mandated that telcos buy in a block of 20 units. Thus, an operator would need to pay at least Rs 9,840 crore to buy 5G spectrum on a pan-India basis as the regulator suggested it should beput to auction in the block size of 20 MHz. This means, a carrier would need to spend around a whopping Rs 50,000 crore for 100 units for effective roll-out of 5G services.Nahata said the sharp fall in data usage prices from Rs 500 per GB to Rs 10 per GB over the past three years since Jio’s 4G launch had made data affordable even for economically weaker sections of society, and increased demand exponentially for data services. In such a scenario, he said, the government needed to take steps to ensure spectrum is continuously available to the industry.The Jio director called on the government to unveil a roadmap to ensure timely availability of spectrum, urging it to make airwaves available even between auctions at the price determined in the last sale. The telcos also urged the government to expedite steps to restore the industry’s financial health and bring an end to countless litigations plaguing it.Bharti’s Mittal said “endless litigation upwards of Rs 1lakh-crore” is causing sectoral stress, and needs to besettled.He also called on the government to take steps to unlock GST credit, lower licence fees and spectrum usage charges (SUC) and revise customs duty on telecom gear to bring down the overall cost of doing business for financially stressed telcos.The Bharti Enterprises vice chairman said the mismatch between low average revenue per user (ARPU) and high capex requirement also added to financial stress in the industry. Telco ARPU levels in India, he said, hovered between$1-1.5, way below roughly $36 in the United States. “Despite this (low) ARPU level, capex levels of Indian telcos are similar to big global players, which is causing more (financial) stress,” said Mittal, underlining the need to revive the fortunes of the sector.Mittal also pointed out that obtaining right of way (RoW) approvals remained a big challenge, which could negatively impact 5G network deployments. Timely RoW approvals, he said, would be critical as 5G networks require more sites and a greater degree of fiberisation for optimum coverage.Jio is the only profitable telco in the Indian telecom sector, which has been battling falling revenue and profitability owing to the ongoing price war. The woes of telcos have been compounded by more than Rs 7 lakh crore of sectoral debt.