The Supreme Court on Wednesday reserved its judgement on a petition filed by Tata Teleservices challenging the telecom tribunal's order, which classified the company's fixed wireless phone service 'Walky' as limited mobile.
With this, the apex court has also reserved Reliance Infocomm's plea challenging Telecom Dispute Settlement and Appellate Tribunal's (TDSAT) order which held that its fixed wireless telephone was equivalent to mobile service and thus Reliance was liable to pay ADC of over Rs 400 crore (Rs 4 billion).
The tribunal in September 2005 had rejected Tata Teleservices's petition and held that `Walky' was actually a WLL (M) service, with limited mobility, and not a fixed telephone service, contrary to the licence granted to the company.
TDSAT had ruled that Walky service offered by Tatas was a mobile service, thus the private company was liable to pay a levy called Access Deficit Charge (ADC) to state-owned BSNL as per the interconnect order of telecom regulator Trai.
Thus, Tata would have to pay a whopping about Rs 300 crore (Rs 3 billion) as levy to BSNL on account of ADC.
Opposing paying the levy retrospectively, Tata Teleservices in its appeal had questioned the unilateral decisions of charging ADC on the ground that it was 'anti-competitive' and severely hurting the future growth of fixed line services in the country.