Home ministry for action against telcos violating user norms

The home ministry has reiterated that operators that violated the subscriber verification norms should be penalised by either imposing a financial penalty or terminating their licence in Haryana.

In a letter sent to the telecom secretary recently, the home ministry said considering the failure of the service providers and violation of licence conditions, stringent action should be taken against them.

The department of telecommunications (DoT) said it had examined the replies from various operators that it received following the showcause notice served to them in August after the police had discovered that dealers of the operators had given out multiple SIMs to individuals without proper verification of their details.

The DoT found that operators had large number of bulk connections (more than 10 connections on a single name) activated in Haryana circle.

The violators include all major operators "" Bharti Airtel, Hutch, Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices and Idea Cellular. If a financial penalty is imposed, the telecom firms may have to pay about Rs 50 crore.

The move comes even as the industry has sought time till March 2007 for subscriber verification. It has also proposed a joint awareness nationwide campaign with the DoT on the importance of verification tomorrow.

The department has directed the telecom industry to complete subscriber verification by October 30. About 31.26 per cent (23.5 million) of the pre-paid subscribers base on May 31, 2006 have been re-verified till date.

The industry has been saying that the lack of unique national individual ID and robust monthly growth of new subscribers have made their task almost impossible.