'Telecom sector facing penalties of around Rs. 6500 crore'

The telecom sector is facing penalties of around Rs. 6,500 crore on various counts, according to industry body AUSPI.

"On rough estimate the magnitude of penalty that telecom sector is facing today is estimated to be Rs. 6.5 thousand crore," AUSPI's Secretary General Ashok Sud informed Telecom Secretary MF Farooqui at an ASSOCHAM event.

Without giving the detailed break-up of the penalties, Sud said: "Out of this amount, Rs. 1,900 crore has been imposed on industry on EMF (radiation) matter. In this only 1.2 percent of penalty are for actual infringement of norms while 64 percent of it is for late submission of certificates and trivial issues."

Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUSPI) is a representative industry body of Unified Access Service Licensees providing CDMA and GSM Mobile Services, Fixed Line Services as well as Value Added Services.

The industry representatives asked the Secretary to work on rationalising penalty and setting up appeal mechanism at higher level at Department of Telecom.

Farooqui said: "The level of penalty is alarming. I realise one thing that we are not (in an) adversarial position but we are partners. We at DoT will very quickly set up a system for rationalising penalty that is proposed and mechanism for appeal."