RCom, Airtel telecom war escalates
28 July 2012 10:13 AM GMT
Reliance Communications (RCom) on Friday approached telecom tribunal Telecom Disputes Settlement Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) accusing Bharti Airtel of blocking international calls originated on its network instead of forwarding them to intelligent network – a services used for toll free numbers.
Issuing notice to Airtel and the Department of Telecom (DoT), a TDSAT bench headed by its chairman Justice S B Sinha asked the Sunil Mittal-led company maintain status quo and said no call to Intelligent Network (IN) numbers would be blocked till 9 August, the next date of hearing.
Bharti Airtel would also file a short reply within two weeks and RCom a rejoinder, it further said.
Under IN services, special toll free numbers are assigned under special 1,800 series, which are free to the calling party, but a telephone carrier feed is charged from the subscriber who owns the toll free number.
Airtel and RCom had entered into an agreement on 8 May 2007 for forwarding calls made on toll free/free numbers.
During the proceedings senior advocate Ramji Srinivasan appearing for RCom alleged that Bharti Airtel after five years of agreement is now contending such free calls cannot be terminated outside India. As per the agreement, both the firms were forwarding calls made to IN number respectively from their networks sharing a revenue of 52 paise per minute, he said.
However Senior counsel Maninder Singh appearing for Airtel said that ‘it was fraud’ on them. The agreement was only for call within India.
According to RCom, the agreement between them provides that they would ‘provide their IN customers of one party access to respective subscribers on the other's network through free phone service... there is no condition in the agreement that the calls can not be terminated outside India’.
Issuing notice to Airtel and the Department of Telecom (DoT), a TDSAT bench headed by its chairman Justice S B Sinha asked the Sunil Mittal-led company maintain status quo and said no call to Intelligent Network (IN) numbers would be blocked till 9 August, the next date of hearing.
Bharti Airtel would also file a short reply within two weeks and RCom a rejoinder, it further said.
Under IN services, special toll free numbers are assigned under special 1,800 series, which are free to the calling party, but a telephone carrier feed is charged from the subscriber who owns the toll free number.
Airtel and RCom had entered into an agreement on 8 May 2007 for forwarding calls made on toll free/free numbers.
During the proceedings senior advocate Ramji Srinivasan appearing for RCom alleged that Bharti Airtel after five years of agreement is now contending such free calls cannot be terminated outside India. As per the agreement, both the firms were forwarding calls made to IN number respectively from their networks sharing a revenue of 52 paise per minute, he said.
However Senior counsel Maninder Singh appearing for Airtel said that ‘it was fraud’ on them. The agreement was only for call within India.
According to RCom, the agreement between them provides that they would ‘provide their IN customers of one party access to respective subscribers on the other's network through free phone service... there is no condition in the agreement that the calls can not be terminated outside India’.
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