India - DoT fines telcos Rs 42 crore over fake identities

[economic times] The government has imposed a penalty of a little over Rs 42 crore on the mobile operators for SIM cards bought on fake identity so
far, which refers to defaulting on subscriber verification norms.

A Department of Telecom official said the total amount of penalty imposed for SIM cards brought on fake identities on various operators so far is Rs 42.77 crore from June 2008-November 2009.

In 2008-09 alone, DoT had slapped a penalty of Rs 32 crore on the operators for failing to adhere to the subscriber verification norms. DoT has imposed a penalty of Rs 7.38 crore on the service providers operating in J&K and in Assam, the penalty is Rs 1.76 crore from April-July.

The major defaulting operators are BSNL, Bharti Airtel, RCommunications, Vodafone, Tatas, Dishnet group, MTNL, Spice Communications, Reliance Telecom, BPL, HFCL Infotel, Sistema-Shyam, said the official.

Fake identity: DoT fines telcos Rs 42 cr