Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Friday, Oct 15, 2004
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Friday, Oct 15, 2004 |
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Telecommunications Info-Tech - Telecommunications DoT may slap Rs 50-cr penalty per licence on Reliance Infocomm — Co found flouting ILD norms Our Bureau
New Delhi , Oct. 14 THE Department of Telecom (DoT) today said that Reliance Infocomm has been found to be violating licence norms by routing international long-distance calls illegally into the country. Senior DoT officials said that a penalty of Rs 50 crore per licence is likely to be imposed on the company. Mr Nripendra Misra, Chairman, Telecom Commission and ex-officio Secretary, DoT, said: "We have issued a notice to the company, which means that they have violated the licence conditions. We have given them time till October 20 to clarify their stance after which we will decide on the action to be taken against the company. We can impose a maximum penalty of up to Rs 50 crore per licence." The company has been found to be illegally routing calls in more than 40 cities across six circles. Speaking on the sidelines of a news conference to announce the broadband policy, Mr Misra said that if any company was found to be repeatedly violating the licence norms, the Government has the option of cancelling the licence too. He added that the Government also has the option of doubling the bank guarantee for errant companies. BSNL had blown the whistle against Reliance for transmitting international calls into India like local calls. It has also served notice to the company seeking compensation for the illegal routing. A Reliance Infocomm spokesperson refused to comment on the matter. Company sources said that they had time till October 19 to reply to DoT's notice. BSNL had served disconnection notice to Reliance in Chennai, Mumbai and Pune. Company officials said that Reliance was routing international long-distance calls into the country and terminating on the company's fixed-line network as if they were local calls, in order to escape payment of the access deficit charges to BSNL. Access deficit charge is a form of a cess paid by all private telecom operators to BSNL for undertaking rural telephony. So, for every call that Reliance terminates on BSNL's network, the company pays a charge. The charge payable to BSNL is as high as Rs 4.80 per minute for ILD calls and around 40 paise for local calls. BSNL has alleged that Reliance was bringing ILD traffic into the country and then changing the caller line identification number of the caller to pass it on to BSNL's telephones as if the calls were originating from less than 50 km.
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