Telecom Panel Approves Rs 50-cr Fine On Airtel

[Himanshu Singh 19]

he Telecom Commission (TC) has given its approval to the department of telecom’s (DoT) demand that it be allowed to impose a financial penalty of a maximum of up to Rs 50 crore on Bharti Airtel for what it terms as ‘violations in the International Long Distance (ILD) licence agreement’.

As reported earlier by ET, the DoT after examining Bharti Airtel’s reply on the issue and also consulting its technical arm — Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC) – had approached the TC stating that the company had violated a total of four clauses in its ILD licence: “As per the opinion of the TEC, there are two violations — connecting of public internet through the ILD network which is not allowed under the ILD licence and using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gateway in Delhi and Chennai without the approval from the government,” the DoT had said in its communication to the Telecom Commission.

Bharti in its reply had contested that no approval was required for installation of VoIP gateway while adding that after installation the company had ensured that the monitoring of calls were done and the same was also demonstrated to the security agencies prior to the start of ILD services. “Thus, our monitoring facilities were always completely intact and no call escaped from monitoring,” the company had said.

“Since we have not violated any licence condition and no compromise has been made on monitoring aspects, payment of Access Deficit Charge and quality of service, we request the department to consider our submissions favourably and withdraw the show cause notice,” Bharti’s reply added.

The DoT had, however, told the TC had it had decided to penalise the company only after its vigilance cell had inspected Bharti ILD switch. In support of its argument, the DoT has also said that Bharti had failed to submit any approval for operating its VoIP gateway: “The stand of Bharti that there is no requirement of equipment-wise clearance to be taken from the licensor is totally false. Under Clause 23.18 and 23.22 it is clearly mentioned that approval of the licensor is required.”