The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is likely to ask operators such as Reliance Communications, Bharti airtel and Idea Cellular to pay it Rs 11 billion for under-reporting revenues.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had, in 2009, asked the DoT to conduct a special audit of RCOM, Bharti airtel, Vodafone Essar, Idea Cellular and Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL)?s financial accounts for 2007-08. This was because the TRAI suspected these operators of misreporting their revenues to avoid payment of licence fee to the government through revenue share.
The move was also to check operators’ scope to arbitrage, which is shifting revenue from a higher licence fee to the lower side. TRAI had noticed that some of operators were showing more revenue in segments that carried a lower licence fee.
The special audit was for those companies which have multiple licences, such as a UASL licence, a NLD licence, an ILD licence and an ISP licence. All the aforementioned five companies hold all these licences.
