The Hindu Business Line : Non-payment of dues — Data Access gets show-cause notice from DoT

THE Department of Telecom has issued a show-cause notice to international long-distance service provider Data Access to suspend its licence for failing to pay long-standing dues to other operators, including the state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.

DoT has given the defunct company seven days to respond to the notice.

"Complaints have been received that Data Access (India) Ltd has failed to pay the prescribed access charges to various access providers for termination of calls. This affects the viability of other operators and is against licence norms," said a senior DoT official.

The company, which has lost most of the ILD traffic on its network to competition, owes more than Rs 250 crore to various operators.

Recently, a consortium, led by Chennai-based businessman Mr K. C. Palanisami, acquired 76 per cent of the company from the Sidharth Ray-promoted SPA Enterprises. Data Access has been on the rough patch over the last few months, ever since its plans to go for a Rs 100-crore initial public offering was scuttled after the Securities Exchange Board of India raised objections to its proposal to get listed on the bourses.

The company owes nearly Rs 225 crore to BSNL as interconnection charges for routing incoming ILD calls. Due to non-payment of the dues, BSNL has stopped giving interconnection to Data Access, which has had a major impact on the latter's business.

Data Access, at one time, claimed to have cornered 30 per cent of the incoming ILD market and had posed a major challenge to incumbent Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd by offering better settlement rates to BSNL. The company also has licence to offer ILD services in the UK and the US. In November 2003, Hong Kong-based Pacific Century Cyber Works had brought down its stake in Data Access from 74 per cent to 24 per cent.

If DoT does decide to cancel Data Access' licence, this will only be the second such decision. The first operator whose licence was annulled was cellular operator Koshika for not paying licence fees.

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