Apex court moves on call routing dispute

FROM THE COURT

The Supreme Court today issued notices to the basic telecom operators on an appeal moved by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) against the order of the Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) asking it to refund the charges collected between July 3, 2001 and May 1, 2003 to the operator.

However, the Bench, comprising Justice DM Dharmadhikari and Justice BN Srikrishna, did not stay the order of TDSAT passed in November last year.

Since no figures were submitted by the operators represented by the Basic Telecom Service Operators, the TDSAT had appointed a commissioner for examining the accounts of the operators to find out the figure of excess payment. He is still to complete the work.

Solicitor General GE Vahanvati submitted that BSNL was giving a special package during the period to its subscribers with a pulse rate of 120 seconds.

The pulse rate of the private operators was 15 seconds. The private operators, therefore, cannot not claim that they should also get this concession because they are using BSNL's facilities.

"We are in a competitive market and we have to service the largest number of consumers," the counsel said.

However, TDSAT has asked BSNL to extend similar concessions to customers of other service providers on the representation of private basic and cellular operators. There is no such obligation, according to Vahanvati.

The solicitor-general said the TDSAT order would give undue benefit to the basic and cellular-service operators and their customers at the cost of the public-sector undertaking.

Since those operators had no mechanism to know the point of interconnection and the distance of carriage of the call, they cannot pass on the benefit to their customers.

This would lead to unjust enrichment of the service providers at the cost of the government company, the counsel argued.