DoT May Issue Notice To Vodafone Group Plc's Indian Unit And Other Telcos For Under-reporting Revenues-The Economic Times

The Economic Times reported that Department of Telecom (DoT) is learnt to be in process of sending demand notice to five private operators for under reporting their revenues in two years. The department has earlier issued show cause notice to Bharti Airtel Limited, Vodafone Group Plc's unit, Reliance Communications Ltd. (RCom), Tata Teleservices Ltd and Idea Cellular Limited after a special audit revealed under reporting of revenue during assessment years starting from 2006 to 2008. The department is expected to raise a demand of about INR823 crore all the telecom companies. DoT said RCom may be asked pay around INR310 crore (INR3.1 billion), Bharti Airtel INR161 crore, Tata Teleservices INR179 crore, Vodafone INR107 crore and Idea Cellular about INR64 crore. Telecom regulator Trai in 2009 had asked the DoT to conduct a special audit of financial accounts of these five telecom companies for the 2006-08 period observing that operators were under-reporting their revenues to avoid payment of licence fee to the government through revenue share.