Bharti Airtel Ltd.

The Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) have slapped a penalty of Rs 5 crore each i.e. 10 percent of the Rs 50 crore to Bharti Airtel and Tata Communications for violation of ILD licence terms and conditions. The penalty was imposed on the company by the Department of Telecom (DoT) and TDSAT by passing an interim order solicited the company to pay said amount to the DoT within two weeks.

DoT has levied the penalty for providing international private lease circuits to foreign company SingTel, allegedly violating the terms and conditions of International Long Distance (ILD) licence. DoT had set up a committee to study and advise the amount of penalty to be imposed on Tata and Bharti.

The committee investigations state, from submissions made by Bharti that the company had raised the invoice to SingTel at its Singapore address for the portion of circuit provided by Bharti Airtel. Airtel has accordingly paid the applicable licence fee on the revenue earned by providing the Indian half circuit.

As per the licensing norms, Indian ILD operators are authorised to provide Indian circuits to a foreign carrier (like SingTel in this case) so that they are able to provide end-to-end services to their customers in their territories.