The government is contemplating slapping penalty on four foreign telcos, including AT&T, MCI and BT, for allegedly circumventing licence norms that may have caused revenue loss to the government.

"The Committee of directors has observed that the foreign MNCs --AT&T, BT, Equant and MCI (Verizon) have procured the ILD services from the licenced operators-- VSNL, Reliance and Bharti and provided to the customers in India. These MNCs have also issued bills and realised revenues from customers in India," said an internal panel of department of Telecom.

Senior DoT officials said decision is pending on this matter and it is currently in the analysis stage. For any further action on this, the final proposal of the committee has to get Telecom Commission and then Minister A Raja's approval. As per the draft, AT&T faces a penalty of Rs 86 crore (Rs 860 million), BT Rs 11.77 crore (Rs 117.7 million), Equant Rs 11.66 lakh and small amount on MCI (Verizon).

In case of AT&T, the report said the loss of revenue as unpaid licence fee is Rs 34.57 crore (Rs 345.7 million) between 2002 and 2006. At a penalty rate of 150 per cent the total payment comes to Rs 86.43 crore (Rs 864.3 million).

The committee, however, recommended the Indian ILD licencees--Bharti, Reliance and VSNL had not violated any terms and condition of ILD licence. The committee which was set up under the chairmanship of Additional Secretary (T) of DoT said it has not gone into the financial detail to ascertain the revenue loss.