Appearing for the department of telecom at the Telecom Dispute and Appellate Settlement Tribunal, Solicitor General Goolam Vahnavati contested Reliance contention that issue of non-payment of access deficit charge was different from routing international calls as local calls.
"Who gave them (Reliance) the right to terminate international calls and redirect it," he asked. "No one can change the nature of international calls to domestic calls. They (Reliance) have been caught and caught in knots," Vahnavati said.
Commenting on the response of Infocomm, headed by Mukesh Ambani, to the notice of Rs 150 crore (Rs 1.5 billion) penalty imposed on it by the DoT, he said that the reply by the private operator "established the intentions of the petitioners to continue its deceptions for as long as possible."
The DoT said "non-payment of statutory charges by masquerading traffic affected the financial viability of other service providers and is not in any case in the public interest."
According to the DoT direct dedicated links to a foreign carrier for the switched voice telephony bypass the authorised switched routes of the international long distance service provider and these were not allowed.