Trai for over Rs 3,000 crore penalty on Airtel, Vodafone, Idea

TIL Desk/Business/New Delhi-The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Friday recommended a fine of Rs 50 crore per circle against the top three incumbent operators Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular for denying sufficient points of interconnect to Reliance Jio Infocomm resulting in inconvenience to RJio’s consumers as a large number of call attempts resulted in failure.

While a fine of Rs 50 crore each for 21 circles has been recommended for Bharti and Vodafone, for Idea the same is for 19 circles. Since Trai does not have powers to levy fines, it has recommended the department of telecommunications to levy the same in its capacity as the licensor since these companies have violated their licence conditions.

 It has said that though the licensor has the powers to revoke the licences for defying directions, it has not suggested such a harsh measure as it would inconvenience a large number of consumers.