New Delhi: The country’s largest private telecom operator, Bharti Airtel, paid the highest revenue, both in terms of spectrum charges and licence fees, to the government for the quarter ending December 2009.

As per the data compiled by telecom regulator TRAI, Bharti paid Rs570.17 crore as licence fees and Rs301.49 crore as the spectrum charge for the third quarter ended December 2009.

Bharti had added 2.85 million new user in December.

There has been constant debate among the incumbent GSM operators (like Bharti and Vodafone) and CDMA players (like Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices) that the former set of players were paying hefty spectrum charges compared with others.

The GSM operators claim that they are being charged much higher for every unit of spectrum usage.

Going by TRAI’s figures, Bharti’s total outgo on licence fees and spectrum charges together for the Q3 was more than double the amount paid by the two leading CDMA players RCom and TTSL together.

Bharti paid Rs 871.66 crore to the government, while RCom and TTSL together paid only Rs 401.81 crore for the October -December period.