The Telecom Comission, a panel set up within the Department of Telecom with external representatives, has suggested that the ministry of communications should send back for ‘reconsideration’ the recommendation by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India for it to impose a fine of Rs 30.5 billion on Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone India.
The three dominant telecom operators were found by the regulator to have knowingly created congestion at their interconnection points with Reliance Jio, a new 4G operator that started its trial services late last year.
Communications minister Manoj Sinha did not say whether the government has indeed sent back the recommendation for reconsideration or whether it plans to follow the recommendation for imposing the fine or whether it plans to ignore the recommendation. Under the law, it can do any of the three.
The TRAI had, in October, suggested that the Department of Telecom should impose a penalty of Rs 10.5 billion on Airtel and Vodafone, and Rs 950 cr on Idea for going slow on providing interconnection points, which allegedly caused up to 80 percent of the calls made by Jio customers to these networks to fail.
According to the clauses of telecom licenses in India, it is illegal to deny any fellow operator interconnection points to allow that operator’s subscribers to make calls to other networks.
After a stern warning from the telecom ministry, the three operators increased the number of interconnection points between their networks and that of the new operator, resolving the problem.
By Baishakhi Dutta
