The Delhi Excessive Court docket has dismissed an enchantment from Vodafone Concept (Vi) in opposition to a advice by the telecom regulator that would imply that Vi has to pay a Rs 2000 crore penalty. The advice from TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) got here as a result of the telco had denied factors of interconnect to Reliance Jio. Due to this, clients of Reliance Jio confronted a number of name drops and poor community expertise. In keeping with a CNBC-TV18 report, Vi’s enchantment in opposition to the TRAI advice has been quashed by the Delhi HC. This might imply that Vi would now should pay a Rs 2000 crore penalty on high of its present liabilities.
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But it surely wasn’t Vi alone that had denied Jio factors of interconnect. Again in 2016, there was no Vi. There was Vodafone and Concept. Additional, one other main participant on the time was Bharti Airtel. All these telcos had denied Jio factors of interconnect. Taking a look at this, TRAI had stated {that a} levy of Rs 50 crore penalty could be relevant for each Airtel and Vodafone for every of the 21 telecom circles in India (J&Okay was excluded). On the similar time, the identical penalty was relevant for Concept as nicely, however for 19 circles. This meant a penalty of Rs 1050 crore for Airtel and Vodafone and a penalty of Rs 950 crore for Concept.
Since Vodafone and Concept merged to change into Vi, their penalties additionally merged to change into Rs 2000 crore (Rs 1050 crore + Rs 950 crore). TRAI had stated that the transfer from the opponents of Jio was geared toward stifling competitors and was additionally anti-consumer. Vodafone had moved in opposition to the advice of TRAI. However nothing good has come out of it to date. The Delhi HC has already quashed the enchantment from Vi, and now an in depth report on the matter is awaited.
