Bharti gets TRAI notice

Telecom regulator TRAI has issued a show cause notice to Bharti Group, offering mobile services under AirTel brand, for violation of licence conditions by continuing a particular service inspite of the government's instruction to stop it.

According to the notice, Sunil Mittal-owned Bharti Cellular informed the department of telecom that the company provided subscriber local dialing services till January this year even as DoT had instructed all the cellular operators to discontinue the service in June 2003.

In the 'subscriber local dialling' service, the cellular operators permitted their roaming subscribers to be accessed by the local subscribers on a local call basis, which caused a huge loss to BSNL and MTNL.

According to sources, the company has sought time to reply to TRAI's notice. DoT has informed the regulator that Bharti claimed to continue the services after duly notifying the same to TRAI and these services were provided till January 11, 2005, the TRAI notice said.

"In view of the above stated facts, Bharti Cellular is called upon to explain why action should not be taken against them for violation of the licence conditions, in particular clause 16.1 of Licence Agreement for cellular mobile telephony and for licence agreement for Unified Access Services," TRAI said in the notice.

Sources said that DoT had also asked TRAI to give its views on whether provision of such services were tantamount to violation of licence conditions.

Earlier this month, DoT had sought information from various cellular operators, including Hutch, Bharti and Spice, if there was any violation of licensing norms under 'Subscribers' Local Dialing' service provided by them.

The loss was to the tune of Rs 740 crore (Rs 7.40 billion) during December 2002 and June 2003 when the services were offered by the cellular operators, the sources said.

The said services were provided on a local call basis by dialing prefix code 0 before roamers' mobile number, which is a violation of the National Numbering Plan and generated fake call data records.

This could have resulted in bypassing STD traffic by converting a long distance call into a local one. The service providers had stopped the services after they were directed by DoT to do so in June 2003 to all the cellular operators, including BSNL and MTNL.