NEW DELHI: The Telecom Commission, the highest decision making body of the communication ministry on Wednesday recommended that incumbent GSM operators give up all spectrum in the 900 MHz band at the time of their licence renewals beginning 2014.The commission's decision is a major blow to Bharti, Vodafone Idea and BSNL, who have been vehemently opposing the proposal to refarm airwaves, which involves redistribution of the highly efficient airwaves in 900 MHz band and substituting it with frequencies in the 1800 MHz.If the P Chidambaram headed inter-ministerial panel on spectrum that is meeting on Thursday accepts this recommendation, incumbent mobile phone companies will have to pay about Rs 1.5 lakh crore to buy back spectrum they hold in the 900 MHz band. If they choose not to buy back these airwaves, they will have to shell out about Rs 1 lakh crore to migrate their customers on this band to the 1800 MHz frequency, according to a study by Analysys Mason on behalf of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the industry lobby representing GSM players."We have recommended that full refarming of the entire 900 MHz band of spectrum be adopted. We will refer this to the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) and this will be discussed at the EGoM meeting tomorrow. The EGoM will take the final decision on this," telecom secretary R Chandrasekhar told reporters after the TC meeting.The telecom secretary also told ETthat the communications ministry planned to complete the sale of these airwaves by May 2013. "Trai had recommended that 900 MHz auctions must be held about 18 to 24 months before the licence expires, implying that the sale process should be completed by May next year. But these operators will have to give up the 900 MHz spectrum only when their permits expire, and this begins from November 2014 onwards," Chandrasekar added.While Bharti, Vodafone and Idea declined to comment, COAI warned that the telecom commission's decision would be the 'death knell for the industry that has been going through rough times due to harsh, unreasonable and irrational decisions of the government on spectrum reserve price, spectrum usage charge and one-time license fee'.The industry body also said that refarming of airwaves in the 900 MHz band against was against the consumer, industry and well as the national interest and discriminated against the GSM industry. "The spectrum refarming is tantamount to forcible dislodgment of a legitimate occupant and goes against license terms and conditions. Networks are designed around frequency bands, not the other way round! There is no precedence in the world, where any telecom network, let alone some of the world's biggest telecom networks, has had its frequency band uprooted," COAI said.The GSM industry body pointed out that the Analysys Mason study had estimated that overall tariffs will go up by as much as 64 paise per minute if mobile phone companies pass on refarming costs to customers. It also added that operators would have to write off equipment on the 900MHz at an estimated cost of Rs 22,310 crore.An executive with a leading GSM operator said that affected companies planned to go to court if the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) endorses the telecom commission's recommendations on Thursday.Prior to the TC's decision, Bharti, Vodafone and Idea and sent multiple communications to the government stating that reallocation of more efficient 900 MHz (megahertz) spectrum through auctions would make investments of over Rs 150,000 crore redundant, lead to protracted disputes, disrupt services for hundreds of millions of mobile customers and translate to higher tariffs for customers as operators would have to incur huge costs for setting up additional towers for the 1800 MHz network.But the industry body representing dual-technology operators such as Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices welcomed the telecom commission's move on refarming of all airwaves in the 900 MHz band and said that this would help create a level playing field between incumbent GSM operators and new GSM operators.The Association of Unified Service Providers of India (AUSPI) also said that most of the 900 MHz spectrum is held by three private operators - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea - for almost a decade without making any additional payment and hence they were likely to complain bitterly about this decision."The incumbents have reaped significantly high benefits by exclusive use of 900 MHz spectrum for a decade and have gained market leadership and have achieved profitability due to very high quality of service and significantly lower cost associated with 900 MHz spectrum," AUSPI added.The telecom commission had examined three options submitted by an internal telecom department panel refarm all airwaves held by incumbents in the 900 MHz band, or allow these mobile phone companies to retain either 2.5 MHz or 5 MHz of airwaves in this band. "Allowing operators to retain either 2.5 MHz or 5 MHz would have been equivalent to giving them the first rights over this frequency so, we decided to go for full refarming," Chandrasekhar said.The COAI also said refarming would impact quality ofurban coverage and rural coverage and added that there would be a ' risk of reduction in geographic coverage by as much as 40%'. "Such a reduction of coverage is estimated to directly impact the connectivity to about 70-80 million subscribers," it added.