A “cartel” of four or five telecom firms, having a billion subscribers, are making Rs. 250 crore a day but not making investments on their network to improve services to check call drops, the government told the Supreme Court on Thursday.
Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for TRAI before a bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and R.F. Nariman, defended the penalty imposed by the regulator on the telecom firms, saying it will be around Rs 280 crore and not thousands of crore as claimed by the service providers.
The Attorney General further said there was a 61 per cent growth in the subscriber base for telecom companies from 2009 to 2015 and they were diverting part of the spectrum to data for making more money.
“Data service costs more than the calls. None of these telecom companies are here for charity. They are here with billion subscribers for profit. They charge for everything,” Mr Rohatgi said.
COAI, a body of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India and 21 telecom operators, including Vodafone, Bharti Airtel and Reliance, have challenged the Delhi High Court order upholding TRAI’s decision making it mandatory for them to compensate subscribers for call drops from this January.
The Attorney General said that in India, the investment by telcos during the past five years has been Rs 5 billion, while it was Rs 50 billion in China during the same period.
“They (telcos) say my investment should be minimum but growth should be maximum because we are only four—five in number to have billion subscribers ,” he said.
The day-long hearing in the matter remained inconclusive and will continue on April 26.
