BSNL vs Reliance: Govt said switch off in an hour, TRAI washed its hands of

The litigation before the Delhi High Court between Reliance Infocomm and BSNL has laid bare a serious failure of Telecom Regulatory Authorit...

3 min readNew DelhiNov 6, 2004 12:00 AM IST First published on: Nov 6, 2004 at 01:41 AM IST

The litigation before the Delhi High Court between Reliance Infocomm and BSNL has laid bare a serious failure of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India TRAI to perform its regulatory function.

TRAI abdicated its duty to intervene in the dispute when BSNL first complained to it on September 20 that, contrary to the terms of licence and interconnect agreement, Reliance Infocomm was passing off incoming international calls from the US as domestic traffic to evade access charges.

In a dispute, which the Government says has far-reaching revenue and security implications, TRAI neither replied to BSNL nor did it take up the matter with Reliance.

The only communication TRAI ever made on the subject was on a similar complaint lodged with it on October 4 by another public sector major, MTNL, which also complained that it was affected by Reliance Infocomm’s evasion of access charges on calls from the US.

In a one-para reply to MTNL, TRAI wrote on October 11: ‘‘The complaint has been forwarded to DoT Department of Telecommunications for further investigation and action as TRAI does not have the necessary machinery to carry out such investigations while DoT has a well-established setup.’’

The TRAI’s response contrasts sharply with the reaction displayed earlier by DoT to BSNL’s complaint against Reliance Infocomm.

In a six-page letter sent on October 4, DoT detailed all the ‘‘features’’ that were wrong in the ‘‘home country direct’’ HCD service launched five months ago in the US by Reliance Infocomm.

In fact, in what is probably an unprecedented measure, DoT directed Reliance Infocomm to ‘‘discontinue such features within one hour of the receipt of this letter.’’

In other words, DoT ordered Reliance Infocomm to immediately stop changing the ‘‘caller line identification’’ CLI of international long distance ILD calls from the US that terminate in the network of either BSNL or MTNL.

The Delhi High Court today directed Reliance Infocomm to file an affidavit stating that ‘‘they have actually discontinued the HCD features and they will not route the ILD calls with wrong CLI.’’

While restraining BSNL from carrying out its threat of not connecting any of the calls originating from the Reliance network till it clears its arrears, a two-judge bench headed by Justice Vijender Jain also directed Reliance Infocomm to pay within three days Rs 40 crore in addition to the Rs 58 crore it had already remitted.

The Rs 98 crore partially meets the total demand of over Rs 250 crore made by BSNL. This is apart from whatever liability MTNL may slap on Reliance Infocomm for its international calls terminating in the network of the public sector company in New Delhi and Mumbai.

The division bench passed interim orders today on an appeal filed by Reliance Infocomm against a judgment delivered yesterday by a single judge of the High Court, Justice Vikramjit Sen. That judgment had passed strictures on Reliance Infocomm.

‘‘A reading of the Agreement between BSNL and Reliance Infocomm prima facie,’’ Justice Sen said, ‘‘leads to the conclusion that Reliance Infocomm has surreptitiously breached the covenants and obligations contained in the Interconnect Agreement with the purpose of withholding monies which appear to be due to BSNL.’’