The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has reportedly imposed a penalty of Rs 500 million each on Bharti Airtel and Tata Communications for providing international private lease circuits to SingTel in violation of international long distance (ILD) licence terms and conditions.
Prior to this, DoT had rebuked SingTel for violating ILD licence norms by acquiring and billing customers in
Further, DoT had established a committee to examine and suggest the amount of penalty to be imposed on the two firms.
As per the licensing norms, Indian ILD operators are authorised to provide Indian circuits to a foreign carrier so the latter is able to provide end-to-end services to their customers in their territories.
The committee found, from submissions made Bharti Airtel that the company had raised the invoice to SingTel at its
Bharti Airtel reportedly paid the applicable licence fee on the revenue earned by providing the Indian half circuit.
Meanwhile, Tata Communications had said in its reply that SingTel had not submitted any document showing that customers were acquired outside India and the company did not check this, because as per the agreement, SingTel can acquire customers only in its own licenced territory and not in India.
Tata Communications has, however, taken immediate corrective steps and taken confirmation from all foreign carriers that they are neither contracting nor billing the customers in
The committee had observed that Tata Communications had paid the licence fee on revenues earned by them for providing half leased circuits to Singapore Telecommunications Limited. It also said that it is not liable to pay any penalty in response to the show cause notice issued by DoT.
