Comments
The telecom tribunal has given a stay order on telecom department’s Rs 650-crore penalty notice on Bharti Airtel till the next hearing on August 21.
Bharti Airtel had filed a plea with the Telecom Disputes Settlement & Appellate Tribunal against the penalty notice pertaining to Subscriber Local Dialling service to its subscribers.
The company said the demand for Rs 650-crore penalty is devoid of any merit and has no justification both on facts and in law.
The case dates back to 2002-05 when Airtel was found to be offering its customers a service called Subscriber Local Dialling. Under this service, a subscriber would be able to get all calls as a local call while roaming.
For example, if a Delhi subscriber travels to Mumbai, he would be able to get incoming calls from Mumbai contacts as a local call.
According to the DoT, such a call should have been routed to Delhi first on the national long distance network and then brought back to Mumbai.
By routing the call in Mumbai itself, Airtel has bypassed the long distance network which is against the licence conditions, the DoT said in an internal note.
According to the Department, this caused revenue loss to the Government in the form of lower licence fee from long distance operations.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.