Bharti Airtel expresses concerns over penalties by DoT

Telecom major Bharti Airtel on Friday expressed concern over the manner in which penalties are being imposed for different violations of licence terms and conditions, and said operators have collectively paid over Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) so far to the government as fines.

"I am told collectively industry has paid more than a Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) in fines to the Government...," Bharti Airtel CEO India and South Asia Sanjay Kapoor said.

Private telecom operators are in pain over the onerous penalty of Rs 50 crore being levied by the Department of Telecom (DoT) for different violations of licence terms and conditions.

"I think industry is really pained on this one (penalty)," Kapoor added.

Recently, operators met Communications and IT Minister Kapil Sibal in order to know the rationale behind imposing Rs 50 crore (Rs 500 million) penalty virtually for every type of violation and raised concerns

over the matter.

"Industry went to met the Minister and we saw a lot of empathy for our concerns and we have commitment from him that he will positively look into the matter and he supports the industry's concerns that it has to be a proper hearing from the impacted parties," Kapoor added.

On the service front, the company is planning to offer its broadband wireless access (BWA) technology to customers within this fiscal.

"We have finalised TDD LTE technology as the preferred technology and not WiMax and hopefully the first set of BWA experiences for our customers should begin to happen within this fiscal," Kapoor said.

Last year, the country's largest mobile operator, Bharti Airtel, had also won spectrum in four circles.

Asking on whether the company has finalised the vendor for the same, Kapoor added, "We have finalised our vendors."

TDD LTE come under category 4G technology. The goal of LTE is to increase the capacity and speed of wireless data networks. Its wireless interface is incompatible with 2G and 3G networks.