DoT disagrees with Trai's Rs 3050 crore penalty decision on Vodafone, Airtel, Idea

Department of Telecom (DoT) Committee has disagreed with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) for imposing Rs 3,050 crore penalty on telecom operators, sources told Aseem Manchanda.

On October 25, 2016, DoT had formed a  Committee to look into Trai's Rs 3050 crore fine on telecom companies Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular. Trai penalised these companies for not sharing interconnection points with Reliance Jio in October, 2016.

However, on Tuesday, sources told Manchanda that the Committee is not in favour of Trai's decision. The committee will be meeting on February 6 to take final call on penalising these companies. 

In the meeting, the DoT may ask Trai on commercial launch of Reliance Jio which had raised several questions that affected other telecom operators. 

In October, Trai had recommended DoT a penalty of Rs 50 crore per LSA (license service area) on Airtel, Vodafone, Idea for PoI congestion above 0.5%. The regulatory body had imposed Rs 1,050 crore each on Airtel and Vodafone and Rs 950 crore on Idea for 21 and 19 LSAs, respectively. 

Trai to DoT further had said that the denial of PoI to Reliance Jio by 3 companies has ulterior motives to stifle competition and is anti-consumer.

The regulator also stated that the incumbent operators were in "non-compliance of the terms and conditions of licence and denial of interconnection to Reliance Jio appears to be with ulterior motive to stifle competition and is anti-consumer."