The Hindu Business Line : Long distance operators not paying levy: BSNL

New Delhi, Nov. 6 State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd has alleged that long distance telephony operators including BT, Sify, HCL Infinet and Tulip IT Services have evaded payment of access deficit charges to the PSU.

In a note to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, BSNL has named 10 domestic long distance operators and three international long distance operators who have allegedly not paid the charges. ADC is a levy fixed by the telecom regulator and is paid by all the operators to fund rural telephony. Since BSNL is the largest rural phone provider, most of the money collected through ADC accrues to it.

List of companies

Even other public sector companies including MTNL, Power Grid and RailTel have been named by BSNL in its complaint letter to TRAI.

Others who have been named are Idea Cellular, Dishnet Wireless and Essar Group promoted Shippingstop Dot Com. All these companies had taken long distance licences recently after the Government reduced the entry fee to Rs 2.5 crore.

“It is to bring to your notice that following NLD and ILD operators to whom licences were granted during the year 2006 and 2007, are not making the payments of ADC as per the provisions of Interconnect Usage Charges Regulation even after the written requests of BSNL, which is gross violation of the IUC Regulation and their licence conditions,” the BSNL letter to TRAI said.

However, some of the companies which have been named by BSNL said that they had already cleared the dues.

Sources in BT and Idea Cellular said that though they have paid all dues to BSNL, they would take up the matter with the PSU to know why their names have been included in the letter to TRAI. A few other operators said that they were not liable to pay ADC to BSNL since they were not carrying retail calls on a per minute basis but were transporting data and voice for the corporate customers through services like Virtual Private Network.

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