The Telecom Commission (TC) will meet again within a week to try to take a decision on the issue of spectrum usage charge (SUC) as it failed to take a decision on the same during its Tuesday's meeting.

It may be noted here that SUC is a percentage of the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) that telecom companies have to pay to the government.

After yesterday's meeting, TC chairman M F Farooqui said, "The issue needs more discussions. We are discussing a number of options and there could be more hybrids that we might consider. We will meet again in the next few days."

TC has accepted that modification of the present slab-based SUC is necessary, while Farooqui, who is also the secretary of the department of telecommunications (DoT), said modalities required to be worked out.

Maintaining the government's annual earning from the levy is one of the key parameters for determining the new rate of SUC. In the financial year of 2012-13, the government pocketed Rs 5,689.88 crore from SUC, considerably up from Rs 5,148.05 crore in the previous financial year.

Currently, telecom companies are paying between 1-8 per cent of AGR depending on how much spectrum they hold.

Farooqui assured that a decision would be taken before the upcoming spectrum auction, which is scheduled to start on 3rd of February.