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The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has started issuing notices to operators, which under reported their revenues for the period between 2006 and 2008, says news reports.
DoT is likely to recover collective revenue of about Rs 8.63 billion from operators found under reporting their revenues. DoT is issuing notices to operators including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, Reliance Communications (RCOM), Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL), Tata Communications Limited (TCL) and Idea Cellular.
According to DoT, RCOM and Bharti Airtel owe revenues of Rs 2.98 billion and Rs 1.6 billion, respectively.
TTSL including its subsidiary Tata Teleservices Limited (Maharashtra) may have to pay Rs 1.42 billion. Vodafone India, TCL and Idea Cellular may have to pay revenue of Rs 1.21 billion, Rs 0.78 billion and Rs 0.65 billion, respectively.
In 2009, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) asked DoT to conduct a special audit of financial accounts of these operators for the period between 2006 and 2008. TRAI was of the view that the operators were underreporting their revenues to avoid payment of licence fee to the government on revenue sharing basis.
The audit was undertaken by DoT to check operators’ scope to arbitrage, ie. shifting revenue from higher licence fee to the lower licence fee. The unified access service licence including basic and mobile telephony attracts a licence fee of 6-10 per cent where as National Long Distance, International Long Distance and the Internet Service Provider (ISP) attracts a licence fee of six per cent.
According to TRAI some of these operators were apparently showing more revenue in segments that carried lower licence fee.
