The department of telecommunications has overstepped its jurisdiction in asking new telecom service provider S Tel to stop services in three circles on grounds of national security, say analysts. Observers do not rule out the possibility of scores being settled as the company has embarrassed telecom minister A Raja in the alleged spectrum controversy, which is being investigated by the CBI.
However, DoT and S Tel officials said on Monday that talks were still on to resolve the matter.
Former DoT secretaries with whom FE spoke said that such a step was unwarranted and though the department may have acted according to the letter of the law, it was not in the right spirit but none of them were willing to come on record. The officials have a point?ever since the opening of the telecom sector to private players in 1995 it is for the first time that the services of any operator been suspended using the bogey of national security, though some glitches have been found in the operations of some service providers time and again but DoT has often given them time to comply with the norms rather than taking the extreme step of suspending the operations that left the subscribers in the lurch.
As a licensor, DoT has overriding powers to suspend the services of any operator or cancel the licence on national security concerns, and?here it has blanket powers?it does not need to issue any show-cause notice. However, the powers have never been invoked in its extreme form.
DoT officials told FE that S Tel did not provide the facility of lawful interception to the intelligence agencies.
However, if that?s the case it has a precedent in the BlackBerry issue, where it was discovered in 2008 that the technology provider, Canada?s Research In Motion (RIM), did not provide for lawful interception. By that time three major service providers were offering BlackBerry services in the country and never were their services barred. Interestingly, some months later the whole security issue was glossed over and the BlackBerry services continue as before.
In fact, last year even state-owned service providers like BSNL and MTNL began their 3G services without providing for call monitoring services to the intelligence agencies but their services were not stopped.
S Tel is promoted by C Sivasankaran with 49% equity by Bahrain Telecommunications and the company dragged the DoT to the court for arbitrarily advancing the cut-off date for awarding new telecom licences in September 2007. The move led to S Tel not getting licences for 16 circles. Interestingly, the Delhi High Court has struck down the DoT move, which was taken at the behest of telecom minister A Raja, as illegal. DoT has now appealed in the Supreme Court.
The company has licences for eight circles and started operations in three — Bihar, Orissa, and Himachal—-in December 2009. It?s not clear what the national security issues were, as the company said that it had received a one-line letter asking that operations be suspended. P Swaminathan, director of S Tel, told the media in a statement on March 5, the day it received the DoT order: ?We have not been given any reason or explanation, and STel has followed all procedures and got the necessary approvals. We have sent our reply to DoT and asked them to provide further details on the security issue. This will impact over 800,000 mobile users. The gvernment must provide us with details to sort it out as anything concerned with national security is a major issue?.