The Supreme Court on Monday warned Anil Ambani Group firm Reliance Communications that its interconnect agreement will be cancelled if charges against it of masking international calls as domestic ones through auto call-rerouting were proved.
Public sector telecom service provider BSNL has alleged that RComm had been indulging in illegal conversion of its international calls as local calls since 2004, thereby causing huge loss to BSNL.
A Bench headed by Chief Justice S H Kapadia while flaying BSNL for ?not stopping the arrangement? with Reliance said: ?Why didn’t you stop the arrangement. You just relied on the penalty clause. It is a serious matter. We will examine it. Steps should be taken to stop such practices.?
? If that is so (BSNL?s allegations), we will cancel its (Reliance) interconnect agreement and take stringent measures against it,? Justice Kapadia observed while posting BSNL?s petition along with the one filed by Reliance for hearing on August 27.
However, RComm?s senior counsel C S Vaidhynathan and counsel Manali Singal said that the company had nothing to do with rereouting of calls.
Reliance has now taken a stand that that some unscrupulous subscriber had been indulging in such illegal activities, the BSNL said in its petition.
BSNL has challenged the TDSAT judgment of May this year that directed it to hand over the relevant call detail records (CDRs).
It submitted that CDRs were already available with Reliance and such direction would serve no useful purpose as the Ambani firm itself had its own records of call details.
?Reliance in a completely malafide and illegal manner tampered with the Caller Line Identification (CLI) of incoming international calls which were handed over to BSNL camouflaging such calls as local calls and by doing so, Reliance had violated the terms and conditions of the interconnect agreement between the parties,? BSNL stated.
It added that the private telecom service provider had deliberately jeopardised the national security and in doing so had connived and participated in illegal activities.
Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium it had found in 2004 that RComm had been indulging in illegally converting its international calls and thereby ?securing to itself a gigantic unlawful profit/benefit to itself and unlawful loss to BSNL?.
Such an illegal activity was also found to be fradulent by DoT, which had proceeded to impose the maximum prescribed penalty of Rs 150 crore on the three telecom licences of Reliance, he added.
The tribunal had also upheld the penalty imposed on RComm for violating the licence conditions which resulted in handing over of international calls to BSNL as local calls.
Reliance?s appeal against the tribunal’s order is pending before the apex court.
According to the petition, there were strict clauses in the interconnection agreements between the parties prohibiting Reliance from tampering or modifying CLI of the calls or wrongly handing over the international calls as local calls in trunk groups designated for local and domestic calls.
It further said that international calls had much higher Interconnection Usage Charges (IUC) as compared to local and domestic calls.