NEW DELHI: In a temporary relief to Airtel and Vodafone Idea, telecom tribunal TDSAT on Tuesday asked the Department of Telecom (DoT) to put on hold the encashment of bank guarantees in the penalty case against the two telecom operators till the next date of hearing (October 26).
The DoT has assured that the telecom companies’ bank guarantees, worth over Rs 3,000 crore, will not be invoked. This development comes a day after Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea moved the telecom tribunal Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) to challenge the telecom department’s demand notices for payment of Rs 3,050 crore cumulative penalties in the points of interconnect matter
The DoT has slapped a penalty of Rs 2,000 crore on Vodafone Idea and Rs1,050 crore on Bharti Airtel based on telecom sector regulator Trai’s recommendation in 2016, denying Reliance Jio points of interconnect (PoI), which is required to connect one network to the other.
The regulator’s recommendation had come on a complaint by Jio that over 75% of calls on its network were failing as incumbents were not releasing sufficient numbers of PoIs. The fined telecom companies have claimed that ample PoI was given as opposed to what was slapped by the TRAI. Lawyers representing Vodafone Idea argued that TRAI recommended a penalty based on just one-day reading of the quality of service data and did not even average it over the period of 30 days as per the norms.