Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday said the Centre had imposed fines of ₹323.56 crore on telecom operators in nine months of the current financial year for violating rules pertaining to verification of subscribers, but had recovered only ₹62.15 crore so far.
There are a total of 14 companies, including Aircel, Airtel, Vodafone, BSNL, Idea and Telenor, Prasad said in the Lok Sabha.
He said a penalty of ₹73.76 crore was imposed on BSNL, ₹50.25 crore on Vodafone, ₹43.73 crore on Tata, ₹41.76 crore on Idea, ₹40.20 crore on Reliance, ₹38.70 crore on Airtel and ₹1.44 crore on Uninor (now Telenor) among others.
“Telecom Enforcement Resources and Monitoring (TERM) Cells carry out sample verification of CAF and related documents of the acquired customers, by all telecom service providers (TSPs), which bring out non-compliant cases where DoT guidelines pertaining to verification of subscribers were violated by TSPs,” he said.
The Minister said for non-compliant cases, TERM Cells impose applicable financial penalties on erring TSPs as per the guidelines issued from time to time.
Quality of serviceRegarding a query on quality of service, the Minister said that sector regulator TRAI has been monitoring the performance of service providers.
“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.
The penalties amounting to ₹10.70 crore has been imposed so far on defaulting service providers for not meeting the QoS benchmarks, Prasad added.
Meanwhile, he also informed Parliament that total import of electronics goods grew over 15 per cent to ₹2,25,600 crore in 2014-15 over the previous fiscal.
The total production of electronic goods based on figures provided by the respective electronics industry associations was ₹1,64,172 crore, ₹1,80,454 crore and ₹1,90,366 crore during 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2014-15 (estimated), respectively.
Electronics fundPrasad said the Centre has taken steps to promote domestic research and development of electronic products in the country.
An electronics development fund has (EDF) been set up as a ’Fund of Funds’ to participate in professionally-managed ’Daughter Funds’, which in turn will provide risk capital to companies in developing new technologies in electronics, nano-electronics and IT.
The Centre has appointed CANBANK Venture Capital Funds as fund manager of the EDF.
The National Centre for Flexible Electronics at IIT Kanpur, the National Centre for Excellence in Technology for Internal Security at IIT Bombay and the Centre for Excellence for Internet of Things at Nasscom, Bengaluru have been launched to promote Electronics System Design and Manufacturing in the country and develop national capability, he added.
“So far, 179 proposals with investment value of ₹1,20,294 crore have been received under M-SIPS. Out of the total proposals received, 70 proposals with investment value of ₹17,756 crore have been approved/ recommended till date,” he added.