The Telecom Commission in a meeting on Monday has asked the Department of Telecom (DoT) to seek clarification from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on the ₹3,050-crore penalty imposed on three companies – Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular.
The penalty was recommended by the telecom regulator on these three companies for allegedly denying interconnectivity to newcomer Reliance Jio.
According to TRAI’s recommendation, the penalty for Airtel and Vodafone was at ₹1,050 crore each, while for Idea Cellular it was around ₹950 crore. DoT had then sought legal opinion from Attorney General on whether it had powers to impose penalty in the case. The Attorney General then opined that the DoT can impose penalty on the operators.
“The Commission has asked DoT to seek clarification from TRAI on 10-12 points, including whether the 90-day period was given to telecom operators for providing point of interconnection (PoI), method of calculating penalty of ₹50 crore per circle etc,” a senior government official said.
The official said that clarification has been sought on the recommendations of an expert panel set up in the DoT.
Meanwhile, the Commission has also approved demand of ₹2,834 crore to be raised from those telecom operators which provided services between February 2012, when Supreme Court cancelled their licences, and till the time they procured fresh permits after buying spectrum in auction.
A DoT panel, set up to study and recommend action on penalty suggested by TRAI, has sought clarification whether the regulator considered 90-day period that is given to operators for providing points of interconnection (PoI) to Reliance Jio from the date of request, an official said.
Reliance Jio in August had submitted to TRAI that it will need 12,727 PoIs for mobile services and 3,068 PoIs for STD call facilities before commercial launch of its services on September 5. And, ever since its launch, there have been various cases filed against the kind of offers RJio is providing to customers and also continuing its ‘free’ services beyond the three-month (90 days) period.
While the ‘Welcome’ offer by RJio was run between September and December, the company extended its ‘free’ offers with another scheme called ‘Happy New Year’ offer allowing its existing and new users to continue to get voice and data services for free. However, it limited the free data usage to 1 GB per day.
That has led the other players to knock the doors of the authorities saying such offers by RJio are not healthy for the industry.
For instance, Airtel after failing to get a favourable decision from TRAI, has knocked on the doors of the Competition Commission of India seeking respite from RJio’s free services. Airtel said in the compliant that RJio’s tariff plans are predatory and adversely effecting competition.