"I told him that you are right that this  expands the market. At the end, you must understand that we need to charge you for something. SMSes have gone more or less, voice is going down and they recognise that," Mr Mittal said in a media interaction here.

"If you are going to make the data free, then let's do completely philanthropic projects. Government must make spectrum free, there should be free network, but it is not happening," the billionaire industrialist said, while adding that telecom companies were as such not making large money.

The comments, incidentally, come at a time when a high-pitched auction is underway in India for spectrum and committed bids worth about 86,000 crore have come in within first four days of bidding -- crossing the minimum targetted amount of 82,000 crore. The auction will resume on Monday, as more unsold spectrum is left and there are expectations that the overall auction may cross 1 lakh crore.

Telecom companies say they invest billions of dollars in spectrum, network and other operations, but they argue that internet-based entities offering pseudo-telecom services are piggy-backing on the mobile operators' networks without bearing many investments on their own.

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