DoT to impose Rs 650-cr penalty on Airtel

The Department of Telecom has decided to impose a penalty of Rs 650 crore for alleged violation of licence conditions.

The Department has come to a conclusion that Airtel used a call routing system that caused monetary loss to the exchequer.

The case dates back to 2003 when Airtel was found to be offering its customers a service called Subscriber Local Dialling. Under this service, a subscriber would be able to get all calls as a local call while roaming. For example, if a Delhi subscriber travelled to Mumbai, he would be able to get incoming calls from Mumbai contacts as a local call.

According to the DoT, such a call should have been routed to Delhi first on the national long distance network and then bring it back to Mumbai. By routing the call in Mumbai itself, Airtel has bypassed the long distance network which is against the licence conditions, the DoT said in an internal note seen by

Business Line . According to the department, this caused revenue loss to the Government in the form of lower licence fee from the long distance operations.

Airtel declined to comment on the issue since it has not yet received the penalty notice from DoT. But, according to industry representatives, the company had introduced the service for the benefit of consumers. By routing incoming calls as local, the user ended up paying lower roaming charges.

thomas.thomas@thehindu.co.in