Bharti Airtel may face Rs 650 crore penalty

Penalty for allegedly violating licence terms on Subscriber Local Dialing services

Bharti Airtel, the country’s largest mobile service provider by subscriber base, is likely to face a penalty of Rs 650 crore for allegedly violating licence terms on the Subscriber Local Dialing (SLD) services.

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), this week, has approved the recommendations of a committee of the DoT which had suggested a penalty of Rs 50 crore each for 13 telecom circles where the company has violated the licence terms, according to a recent discussion.

The Minister of Communications and Information Technology Kapil Sibal has also approved the recommendation of the DoT Committee, stating that the maximum permissible financial penalty of Rs 50 crore each for 13 Unified Access Service (UAS) licences where the violations took place may be imposed on Bharti Airtel.

When contacted, a Bharti Airtel spokesperson declined to comment on the issue, saying that the company is yet to receive any notice from DoT.

The minister, in a recent communication, has also stated that the Government should also recover the loss incurred to national exchequer in the form of licence fee and spectrum charges because of the SLD service of Bharti. The company may also be asked to provide the call detail records (CDRs) of all the calls in respect of its SLD service.

The DoT Committee had, in its recommendations, noted that Bharti Airtel has violated the national long-distance (NLD)/international long distance (ILD) licence conditions in 13 circles between 2000 and 2005.

According to industry sources, the service was launched by Bharti and a few other operators to provide local call facilities to the consumers who roam outside their home telecom zone.

Meanwhile, the DoT Committee had alleged that Bharti Airtel routed national and international calls as local calls that had caused loss to the government exchequer and state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL).

According to the recommendations of the DoT Committee, Bharti Airtel had not stopped the service at least up to June 2005 even after specific directions from the DoT which was issued on June 20, 2003.

In May 2005, The Telecom regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had said that Bharti Airtel was liable to termination of its licences. But, the regulator did not recommended termination of Bharti’s licences as it would affect a large number of subscribers, according to a recent note.