Supreme Court on Thursday restrained Bharti Airtel from enrolling new subscribers and extending to them 3G services in 7 circles where it does not have licenses.
An apex court bench of Chief Justice Altamas Kabir and Justice Vikramajit Sen restrained Bharti Airtel in response to a plea of Reliance Communications to this effect.
Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular and other companies bids for providing 3G services across India. While Reliance Jio won the pan-India 3G spectrum, Airtel has 3G spectrum in 13 circles, Vodafone in 9 circles and Idea in 11 service areas.
Besides Reliance all other companies have roaming agreement with each other, which allows users full 3G-network coverage even outside their circles.
For example if a person having Airtel service goes outside the 13 circles where the company provide services, he/she will still receive 3G services from other networks.
The roaming agreement within these companies however does not allow service providers like Airtel to sell their services outside their circle, which these companies are doing.
Reliance Communications went to court against this.
The apex court order came in the wake of the hearing of a petition by Bharti Airtel that challenged the Delhi High Court order, in which it had restored the DoT order asking the company to immediately stop providing 3G services to customers in circles where it did not have license for such operations.
The DoT had termed as illegal the roaming arrangement between Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, by which Bharti Airtel was extending 3G facilities to customers in the seven circles where it did not hold the licenses to operate such services.
But, in a breather, the court said that the Department of Telecommunications will not take any coercive steps against Bharti Airtel for not paying the penalty of Rs. 350 crore, imposed on it for providing 3G in 7 circles.
The court said that it would hold the next hearing of the matter on May 9.
(with inputs from IANS)
|
|
Comments:
