Idea moves Delhi High Court against TRAI penalty recommendation

Says Jio was given 19,175 interconnection points; call failure due to Jio's bad math on call volumes

Idea Cellular moved the Delhi High Court on Tuesday against a Rs 950-crore penalty recommendation made by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) for alleged failure in providing sufficient points of interconnection to rival telecom operator Reliance Jio.

Idea's challenge to the TRAI recommendation, before a bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal on Tuesday, follows an earlier petition filed by Vodafone against a Rs 1,050-crore recommendation on the same grounds, which is currently pending before another bench of the court. Alongside Idea and Vodafone, TRAI had on October 21, 2016 also recommended a Rs 1,050-crore penalty against Bharti Airtel, taking the total tally to Rs 3,050 crore against the three service providers. Subsequently, DoT had on January 12 received confirmation from the Attorney General's office that the imposition of such a penalty was legal and within the scope of the law.

In its plea, Idea has claimed that it has complied with all requirements of providing interconnectivity as per the quality of service (QoS) rules and as such is not liable to any penalty. The company has stated that as on January 19, it has allocated 19,175 points of interconnection to Reliance Jio and attributed the congestion and call failures as result of Jio's gross underestimation of call volumes, due to its free voice-calling offer.

In response, Additional Solicitor General Sanjay Jain appearing on behalf of the DoT, argued against the maintainability of the Idea petition. Jain submitted that the present plea, like the Vodafone challenge, had been filed prematurely on a mere recommendation by the TRAI and not the actual imposition of a penalty by the DoT, which could then make the order appealable.

After considering the submissions, the bench issued notice to TRAI and the DoT to file affidavits on the issue of maintainability before the next date of hearing and listed the matter for further consideration on February 21.

In its own petition, Vodafone has also made similar submissions regarding compliance of the QoS rules and contended that TRAI's powers are restricted to recommending the revocation of a license for breach of license conditions, but do not to propose such a penalty.