Bharti Airtel continues to face issues related to licensing norms.
Kapil Sibal, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, has reportedly approved of imposing a penalty of Rs 6.5 billion on the company for alleged violation of licence norms in 2003.
Prior to this, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had stated that the operator used a call routing system which led to monetary loss to the exchequer. At the time, the operator was offering its customers the subscriber local dialing service. As part of the service, local call rates were applicable even while roaming.
DoT has stated that such a call should have been routed to Delhi first on the national long distance network and then routed back to Mumbai. By routing the call in Mumbai itself, Bharti Airtel bypassed the long distance network, which is against the prevailing licence conditions. By routing incoming calls as local, customers paid lower roaming charges.
