 "Ravi Shankar Prasad")
However, only Rs 62.15 crore was recovered from the total amount."Total financial penalty imposed on different telecom service providers (TSPs) for violation of customer acquisition form (CAF) verification norms during current financial year 2015-16 (from April 1, 2015 till December 31, 2015) is Rs 323.56 crore," minister for communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a written reply to Lok Sabha today.
A penalty of Rs 73.76 crore was imposed on BSNL, Rs 50.25 crore on Vodafone, Rs 43.73 crore on Tata, Rs 41.76 crore on Idea, Rs 40.20 crore on Reliance Communications, Rs 38.70 crore on Airtel and Rs 1.44 crore on Uninor among others.
The government has recovered Rs 62.15 crore from the operators for the reported period, he said.
"Telecom Enforcement Resources and Monitoring (TERM) Cells carry out sample verification of CAF and related documents of the acquired customers, by all TSPs, which brings out non-compliant cases where DoT guidelines pertaining to verification of subscribers were violated by TSPs," Prasad said.
For non-compliant cases, TERM Cells impose applicable financial penalties on erring TSPs as per the guidelines issued from time to time.
"Wherever the quality of service benchmarks are not met, Trai has also been imposing financial disincentives on service providers for failure to comply with the benchmarks, in accordance with the provisions of the regulations," he said.
To create deterrent against consecutive non-compliance with the benchmarks, Trai had recently notified 'The Standards of Quality of Service of Basic Telephone Service (Wireline) and Cellular Mobile Telephone Service (Fourth Amendment) Regulations, 2015' on October 15, 2015, providing for increased financial disincentive in such cases. "The penalties amounting to Rs 10.70 crore have been imposed so far on defaulting service providers for not meeting the QoS benchmarks," the minister said.
In a separate query, he said, "The increase in revenue of BSNL and MTNL in comparison to some private telecom companies is less due to reasons including less aggressive market skills of PSUs as compared to private companies, legacy manpower and delay in augmentation of mobile telecom network by the firms." The revenue of BSNL stood at Rs 27,996 crore in 2013-14 while that of MTNL was Rs 3,787 crore.
There is decrease in subscriber base of landline connections due to shifting towards mobile services, which is also one of the reasons for less revenue increase. "BSNL and MTNL are taking several steps to enhance revenues through investments to strengthen their network and focus on customer care and service delivery to improve revenue generation," Prasad said.
Also, Prasad said there is no proposal under consideration of Department of Telecom (DoT) for voluntary retirement scheme for employees of BSNL and MTNL.
