The Hindu Business Line : DoT imposes penalty for licence norms violation

New Delhi May 4 Rejecting requests from telecom operators for a relaxation, the Department of Telecom has decided to go ahead and impose penalties on various operators for three different instances of violation of licence norms.

In a meeting of the Telecom Commission, held last week, it has been decided to impose penalty on mobile operators who had not fulfilled the roll out obligations and those who had offered services like `Talk On' that are not permitted under the licence conditions.

Mobile operators who were caught offering cellular services near the international border areas despite the Government's directive that a buffer zone should be left, are also under the DoT scanner.

The operators together could end up paying nearly Rs 700 crore in penalty as a result of this decision.

Of this, seven operators, including Reliance Infocomm, Tata Teleservices, Bharti Cellular and Essar Hutchison, who had not fulfilled their roll out obligations within the stipulated time frame, will have to pay the highest penalty amount of Rs 406 crore.

Delay in clearance

Earlier, the Cellular Operators Association of India and the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India had asked the Government to rethink on the penalty on the grounds that the delay in roll out was caused due to lack of timely clearances from various Government agencies.

"Mobile industry is the most competitive segment within telecom and has in fact the least requirement of a mandatory roll out obligation. It is therefore surprising that while rollout obligations have been removed as a requirements for other segments like national and international long distance, these continue to be prescribed for access service providers, who in fact are the only service providers who are contributing to the growth of tele-density in India," said a letter written by COAI and AUSPI to DoT on April 3.

However, DoT is going ahead with its decision to slap the fine on seven telecom operators for failing to roll out telecom services in 10 per cent of each district headquarters within the first year of operations.

Numbering plan

In another case of violation, Hutchison Essar and Bharti Airtel will have to pay penalty for not adhering to the national numbering plan by offering `Talk On' services and the `2-in-1' plan respectively. Both the services required subscribers to dial # (hash) for availing themselves of the service, which was against the numbering plan at the time the service was launched. As per the licence norms the two companies face a penalty of Rs 50 crore each.

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