The Hindu Business Line : DoT plans to impose penalty on operators for routing illegal calls

THE Department of Telecom (DoT) is mulling imposition of a penalty on service providers, including Bharti Tele-Ventures, whose network was found to be used for carrying traffic through illegal channels.

The vigilance department is examining the case of each operator for violations.

This comes after the Communications Minister, Mr Dayanidhi Maran, recently held a closed-door meeting with all telecom operators and warned them of severe action if measures were not taken to stop illegal routing of calls.

During the meeting, it was pointed out that grey marketers were using Bharti's long-distance network to route almost 30 per cent of the illegal traffic.

According to DoT data, Reliance Infocomm's network was being used to route 38 per cent of the illegal traffic.

DoT has already slapped a Rs 150-crore penalty on Reliance for allegedly routing international calls as local ones.

But in the case of Reliance, the company itself was allegedly carrying out the violation of licence conditions.

In the case of companies that are currently being examined by the DoT, the operator's network was being used by grey marketers.

Security concerns arising from grey traffic has been on the DoT's priority for some time now.

While a number of illegal exchanges have been busted by the department, the intelligence bureau and security agencies have been repeatedly asking it to ensure that the operators set up monitoring systems in place.

The thrust on security has increased with the recent decision to increase FDI in telecom from 49 per cent to 74 per cent.

While announcing the policy, the Government also made it clear that any operator found compromising on security issues would be heavily penalised, which includes revocation of licence.

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DoT plans to impose penalty on operators for routing illegal calls