The Digital Communications Commission has approved imposing penalty of Rs 3,050 crore on Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea for not providing points of interconnection to rival Reliance Jio.
“DCC has accepted TRAI recommendation on penalty on Airtel, Vodafone Idea. It will send same recommendation to competent authority in government for their decision,” Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan told reporters on Wednesday.
TRAI in October 2016 recommended imposing a penalty of Rs 3,050 crore on Airtel, Vodafone and Idea for denying inter-connectivity to Reliance Jio.
The penalty on Airtel and Vodafone is about Rs 1,050 crore each. The penalty on Idea Cellular is about Rs 950 crore.
Reliance Jio, which launched services in September 2016, complained that over 75 percent of calls on its 4G network were failing as incumbents were not releasing sufficient number of PoIs.
