Telecom firm approaches police against illegal sale of its routers & modems

New Delhi: Police have booked a man on charge of fraud for allegedly engaging in the illegal sale of customer premises equipment (CPE) devices belonging to a telecom service provider, officials said on Tuesday.

The CPE devices are telecommunications and IT equipment that are installed at the customer’s premises to connect to the network. Such devices include routers, modems, and set-top boxes.

The telecom firm in its complaint told police that each router cost around Rs 2,500 and expressed suspicion that the accused may be in possession of around 500 such devices.

The firm said it reserves the right to sell, install, and manufacture these devices in order to provide postpaid, prepaid, international roaming, and data connectivity services.

“It came to our knowledge that a person was engaged in fraudulent activities of selling the firm’s CPE devices in an unauthorised manner in the open market. As a routine practice, we conducted an internal review of our CPE devices inventory and during such review, we came to know that the above-mentioned person had been selling the CPE devices (modem and routers) in an unauthorised manner in an open market at a substantially lower price,” the FIR said.

The person keeps the CPE devices in Sultanpur and Saidulajab, from where he sells and dispatches these devices for delivery, it said.

The complainant said the man has been engaged in the sale of its devices for the past several months, police said.

On the basis of the complaint, police have filed a case under section 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the IPC and are investigating the matter.