The Hindu Business Line : To avoid disconnection — Reliance to pay Rs 60 cr to BSNL as interim measure

RELIANCE Infocomm has assured payments of Rs 60 crore to Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd as an interim arrangement pending a resolution of the dispute between the two companies over routing of incoming international calls illegally. Reliance made the payments after BSNL threatened to disconnect the interconnection if the payment was not made immediately.

Sources in Reliance said that the payments should not be construed as an admission of any licence violation as alleged by BSNL. "We are preparing our response to the notice sent by BSNL and the Department of Telecom. We feel that our position is strong and therefore we may not have to pay anything once the issue is resolved. However, since there was a threat to the interconnection with BSNL we have decided to make an interim payment to BSNL in the form of an escrow account," said a Reliance Infocomm executive.

Sources added that Reliance was cracking down on the grey market operators who were using its network for routing ILD calls illegally.

The Department of Telecommunication had on Thursday said that Reliance Infocomm has been found to be violating licence norms by routing international long distance calls illegally into the country.

BSNL officials said that Reliance was routing international long distance calls into the country and terminating on the state-owned company's fixed line network as if it were a local call in order to escape payment of the access deficit charges to BSNL.

Senior DoT officials said that a penalty of Rs 50 crore per licence is likely to be imposed on the company. The company was found to be illegally routing calls in more than 40 cities across 6 circles.

BSNL had served disconnection notice to Reliance in Chennai, Mumbai and Pune. 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. The public sector company has alleged that Reliance was bringing ILD traffic into the country and then changed 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. DoT has given Reliance Infocomm time till October 20 to explain why a penalty should not be imposed on them for violating the licence agreement.

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