"We are withdrawing the petition as a goodwill gesture to Reliance Infocomm," a spokesperson for Tatas told PTI from Mumbai.
When contacted Reliance officials confirmed the development and said that Tata Teleservices had been getting interconnection in various circles after the senior management of the two companies met and resolved various contentious issues.
There was a stalemate in negotiations at one point of time, as Tatas were not agreeable to certain commercial terms, which resulted in delays in interconnection -- which in turn prompted Tatas to approach TDSAT.
The tribunal was scheduled to hear the case today. Tata Teleservices had, in its petition, said, "The action of respondents (Reliance Infocomm and Reliance Telecom) deliberately delaying the provision of interconnection facilities (to Tatas) amounts to denial of interconnection facilities and amounts to breach of licencing agreement."
Calls made by Tata Indicom subscribers to Reliance numbers were being routed through BSNL's network, for which Tatas were paying 19 paise extra for each call as carriage charges to BSNL.
This has been possible as Tatas and BSNL have an agreement, whereas calls from Reliance phone to Tatas were not being completed.
Tatas had pleaded with TDSAT to direct Reliance to provide interconnection facilities in all 12 new telecom circles as well as the five cellular circles, besides seeking to impose exemplary costs on them for "deliberately and wilfully delaying and denying interconnection without just cause."
Interconnection between the service providers is mandatory and is an obligation cast on every licensee.