The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has said that Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel) has violated international long distance (ILD) licence norms by acquiring and billing customers in India without a licence between 2005 and 2009. Meanwhile, DoT has given the green signal to airtel and Tata Communications, which provide international private lease circuits to the foreign firm.
Prior to this, DoT had established a committee to examine and suggest the amount of penalty to be imposed on Tata Communications and Bharti airtel for violation of ILD licence norms.
As per licencing norms, Indian ILD operators are authorised to provide the Indian circuits to a foreign carrier (like SingTel in this case) so that they are able to provide end-to-end services to their customers in their territories.
The committee found, from submissions made Bharti airtel that it had raised the invoice to SingTel at their Singapore address for the portion of the circuit provided by Bharti. airtel paid the applicable licence fee on the revenue earned by providing the Indian half circuit.
The committee also observed that Tata Communications have paid the licence fee on revenues earned by them for providing half leased circuits to SingTel.
