Major telcos Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone, Tata Teleservices, Tata Communications and Reliance Communications will receive demand notices for Rs 1,594 crore from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).

According to an official, the responses by all companies to the showcause notices have been dismissed.

According to DoT’s calculations, Bharti Airtel will have to pay penalties of Rs 292 crore, and Vodafone Rs 254 crore. It calculated the penalty of Rs 113 crore for Idea while, Tata Teleservices will have to pay Rs 273 crore and Tata Communications Rs 120 crore while Reliance Communications will have to pay about Rs 551 crore. 

The DoT plans to send demand notices to Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone, Tata Teleservices, Tata Communications and Reliance Communications by the month end.

The department has earlier issued show cause notice to Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices and Idea Cellular after a special audit revealed under reporting of revenue during assessment years starting from 2006 to 2008.

According to PTI, Telecom regulator Trai in 2009 had asked the DoT to conduct a special audit of financial accounts of these five telecom companies for the 2006-08 period observing that operators were under reporting their revenues to avoid payment of licence fee to the government through revenue share.

The move was to check operators' scope to arbitrage, which is shifting revenue from higher licence fee to the lower side. The UASL basic and mobile) telephony has a licence fee of 6-10% where as NLD, ILD, ISP and Internet Protocol has 6%.