Reliance Communications (RCOM) has written to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), requesting it to defer its plan of imposing penalties on the operator for alleged underreporting of revenues in 2006-07 and 2007-08. RCOM has also asked DoT to refer the matter to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
In a written correspondence to R. Chandrasekhar, secretary, DoT, A.N. Sethuraman, group president, RCOM said, “It is understood that DoT is in the process of raising additional demands of licence fee and spectrum charges as per the recommendations of a DoT committee. It appears that our explanations have not been taken into account while computing these additional demands.?
Prior to this, DoT had decided to raise additional demands on RCOM pertaining to licence fee and spectrum charges after its internal committee endorsed the findings of an earlier audit report that said the company had failed to show revenues of Rs 27.99 billion, causing a loss of Rs 3.15 billion to the government in unpaid taxes. Operators are required to pay 6-10 per cent of their annual revenue as licence fee and 2-6 per cent as spectrum usage charges.
The audit had said that RCOM had grouped its non-voice revenues under its subsidiary Reliance Communications Infrastructure Limited (RCIL) to avoid paying licence fee to the government. Sethuraman said RCIL was a separate legal entity providing value-added services and added that the company paid relevant charges to RCOM, which in turn paid the relevant licence fee and spectrum charges.
