Tatas told to pay BSNL 50% interconnect charges

The Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) today asked Tata Teleservices to pay 50% of the "disputed" interconnections charges to state-owned BSNL for all those calls without caller line identification (CLI) during 2003.

Appearing before the telecom tribunal, BSNL accused Tatas of tampering with the CLI to evade payment of interconnection charges.

While scrutinising details of some of the callers, it was found many calls were made from a single number and there were many such cases, BSNL counsel Pratibha Maninder Singh said.

"All the calls from Bangalore rural were shown to us by using the Bangalore STD code 0808 where as the right STD code of Bangalore rural is 08118.

"There is a large number of such tampering. We have traced the 16-day record only," Singh added.

She informed TDSAT that Tata Teleservices has itself admitted of having a fault in their own system, which was generating non-CLI numbers.

BSNL has claimed Rs 10 crore as interconnection charges for some months of year 2003, and has already served notice for disconnection to tTata Tele.

This was challenged before the tribunal by Tata Teleservices today. The company also opposed that its call data record (CDR) was tampered.

On the issue of disconnection, the Tatas said: "BSNL has waited since 2003. They (BSNL) should wait till a solution is found as we are willing to pay them the right sum."

During the proceedings, BSNL said they were already giving the benefit of doubt to the Tatas and is charging only double the amount for the non-CLI calls if they were below 0.5% of the total calls.