Its penalty time for Indian Telcos - DoT slaps Rs 32 cr of penalty for failing to adhere to sunscriber verification norms

Government has slapped a penalty of Rs 32 crore on mobile operators for failing to adhere to the subscriber verification norms in 2008-09. The penalty has been on all the mobile operators, including BSNL and MTNL, for failing to meet the subscriber verification condition. With a penalty of Rs 1,000 for each unverified subscriber, the number of such users comes to about 3.2 lakh.

Earlier in April this year, DoT introduced a graded penalty system under which operators pay Rs 50,000 per subscriber if more than 20 per cent of their user base is without valid identity documents. However,the penalty continues to be Rs 1,000 per user if the mobile operator's unverified subscriber base is less than 5 per cent of its user base in each of the circles.

With the customer base swelling at ~ 15 million per month, I bet, if strictly implemented, this can bring in about Rs 2000 to Rs 3000 million of revenues per year.