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Thomas K. Thomas

New Delhi, Aug. 5 Despite requests from telecom operators for relaxation, the Department of Telecom has recommended to the Minister of Communication, Mr A. Raja, to go ahead with imposing penalty of nearly Rs 700 crore on various operators for three different violations.

The issues have been hanging fire for more than a year.

In one of the case, 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.

Though such services have since been permitted, the two companies face a penalty of Rs 50 crore each for launching it without DoT’s consent.

The other case relates to non-fulfilment of roll-out obligations. Operators, including Reliance Infocomm, Tata Teleservices, Bharti Cellular and Essar Hutchison, had not fulfilled their roll-out obligations within the stipulated time frame, according to DoT and they will have to pay the highest penalty amount of Rs 406 crore.

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.

However, DoT has taken the view that it was clearly stipulated in the licence conditions that delays of any sort will not be given as an excuse for not fulfilling the roll-out obligation.

The operators were required to roll out telecom services in 10 per cent of each district headquarters within the first year of operations.

The third violation relates to offering mobile services close to the international border.

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