Petition No. 320 of 2014. Case: Tech Mahindra Business Services Ltd. Vs Union of India and Ors.. TDSAT (Telecom Disputes Settlement & Appellate Tribunal)
| Case Number | Petition No. 320 of 2014 |
| Counsel | For Appellant: Meet Malhotra, Sr. Advocate, Mihir Mody, Ravi S.S. Chauhan, Tushar Gupta and Pallak Singh, Advocates and For Respondents: S.S. Shamshery, Aparajita Sharma, Advocates and Subodh Saxena (officer) |
| Judges | Aftab Alam, J. (Chairperson) and Kuldip Singh, Member |
| Issue | Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 - Section 4 |
| Judgement Date | July 01, 2015 |
| Court | TDSAT (Telecom Disputes Settlement & Appellate Tribunal) |
Judgment:
Kuldip Singh, Member
-
The petitioner is challenging a demand notice dated 14th July 2014 issued by the respondent for alleged loss of license fee, owing to the petitioner using dark fiber between two premises of the petitioner.
-
Briefly stated, the facts of the case are as under:
The petitioner is a company engaged in the business of offering call centre/contact centre services for various corporations based abroad.
-
Sometime around February 2007, the petitioner had intended to set up an international call centre in a building known as Spectrum Tower at Malad, Mumbai, along with two extended international call centres situated in buildings known as Paradigm Tower and Prism Tower (3rd and 4th Floor) also at Malad. Accordingly, on 12.2.2007, the petitioner made an application to respondent No. 1 (DOT) for grant of registration certificate to the petitioner to operate international call centre in India under Other Service Provider (OSP) category. The permission was granted on 4.4.2007. Subsequently, the petitioner proposed to set up extended international call centres at 4th Dimension Tower and Prism Tower, for which the permission was granted on 29.12.2009 and 6.3.2012 respectively.
-
As per the petitioner, due to paucity of space in Spectrum Tower, it had to acquire the space in other buildings in closed vicinity to the Spectrum Tower. Further, the international call centres in different buildings were connected together by dark fiber taken by the petitioner from an IP I (Infrastructure Provider) service provider namely, M/s. Microscan Computers Pvt. Ltd., for which purpose it had entered into an agreement dated 1.4.2011.
-
On 22nd October 2012, respondent No. 2 ADG-I(Term), who is an officer of the Term Cell of respondent No. 1 (DOT), visited the petitioner's call centers and made following observations:
i. that the petitioner has established, maintained and worked end to end bandwidth of 3Gbps between OSP centre located at Spectrum Towers and Prism Towers.
ii. that the petitioner has established maintained and worked end to end bandwidth of 11 x 2 Gbps between OSP centre located at Spectrum Towers and Paradigm Towers.
iii. that the petitioner has established maintained and worked end to end bandwidth of 2 x 3 Gbps between OSP centre located at Spectrum Towers and 4th Dimension.
-
As per respondent No. 2, since the bandwidth connectivity between the various offices in different towers, prima facie, appeared to be in violation of the Section 4 of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, a Show Cause Notice (SCN) was issued to the petitioner asking it to explain with all supporting documents as to why action should not be initiated against it for the violation of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885. A detailed reply to the SCN was provided by the petitioner on 9.11.2012.
-
On 28.1.2013, another SCN was issued to the petitioner after considering various documents provided by it. This notice was restricted to the connectivity between the Spectrum Tower and the Prism Tower buildings. This was also replied by the petitioner on 18.02.2013 but the reply was not found acceptable by the respondent who asked the petitioner to disconnect the bandwidth between the Spectrum Tower and Prism Tower with immediate effect and also asked it to deposit loss occurred to DOT/Government of India (GOI) due to the use of unauthorized telecom resources within 15 days of intimation by the respondent. The respondent further stated that if the petitioner failed to comply with these directions, the operation of the petitioner from Spectrum Tower and Prism Tower would...
To continue reading
Request your trial