On Wednesday, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said that it will defend its recommendations to impose a penalty on Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, and Vodafone India. The recommendation of TRAI was Rs 3050 crore penalty on these telecom operators. The penalty was for their failure to provide adequate points of interconnect-Pols to newcomer Reliance-Jio for completing phone calls.
The TRAI authority said to Department of Telecommunications (DoT) that these 3 operators intentionally delayed and denied and delayed the provision of the points of interconnect-pols to Reliance Jio only to restrict the new entrant, which is causing a lot of inconvenience to consumers. The regulatory authority said after its intervention Airtel, Vodafone India, and Idea Cellular provided points of interconnect-pols at much shorter notices implying that they were capable of providing such Pols without any delay. It also said telecom operators are bound by license conditions that make it obligatory on it to maintain the quality of Service and a breach thereof is liable to be treated as a breach of the terms and conditions of the telecom license.
In February 2017, Department of Telecommunication (DoT) had asked TRAI authority to clarify on more than 10 points including the basis of which the penalty amount was calculated and the provision in the law that enabled it to do it. The TRAI was mindful of the fact that revocation of the license will entail significant inconvenience of consumer and hence in view of the larger public interest involved, the Telecom Authority TRAI recommended a penalty of Rs 50 crore per circle. The authority said that there is no provision in the license or regulations to deny or delay provisioning of interconnections during the test phase. It said on the incumbents contesting testing by the Reliance Jio., “On the contrary, the testing cannot be completed unless sufficient points of interconnect (Pos) are provided”. On contention of Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular that 14 paisa per minute was below cost they get for completing a call from a rival network, TRAI said the present termination charge has been prescribed after a detail consultation process.
TRAI authority contested DoTs contention that they should have waited before issuing show-cause notices to the operators for failing to provide interconnections, saying that when the Quality of Service was so bad and millions of consumers were suffering due to blatant and willful violation of the license conditions and the Regulations, it could not have waited. On this issue of not mentioning the penalty amount and it finally recommending the penalty amount after examining the replies of those operators, the TRAI said non-mention of the penalty amount does not make the recommendations legally untenable in any manner.
After all the TRAI authority requested the DoT to reject the penalty recommendations and take into consideration the actions taken on ground by Airtel. The fact is that they have provided Pols to Jio at an unprecedented pace despite the provision of ninety days in the license.
