Court : Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal TDSAT
Aftab Alam, Chairperson. This petition is for recovery of Rs.1,11,70,648=00 from the respondent as dues of Inter-connect Usage Charges for the period January 2010 to January 2012. The basic facts of the case are simple and incontrovertible. The petitioner is the holder of licence granted by the Central Government under section 4(ii) of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885. At the relevant time the respondent too held a licence under section 4(ii) of the Act. It may, however, be stated at the outset that the respondents licence was one of the 122 licences cancelled by the Supreme Court vide its judgment dated 2 February 2012 in Centre for Public Interest Litigation v. Union of India 1 (2012) 3 SCC 1. In regard to the period to which the petition relates, the parties entered into an Inter-connection Agreement for the telecom service areas Bihar, Orissa and Himachal Pradesh on 29 October 2009 and another Inter-connection Agreement for the telecom service areas Assam and North East on 12 Decembe...
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Kuldip Singh: 1. The petitioner seeks an appropriate direction to respondent no. 1, The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India to de-endorse the channel of 2respondent No.2 - M/s. Sindhi Kachchhi Entertainment Corporation Limited from the list of channels permitted to be up-linked by the petitioner through its teleport using INSAT 4-A Satellite. A prayer, inter-alia, is also made for direction to respondent No.1 to dispose of applications seeking de-endorsement of TV channels in a time bound manner. 2. The petitioner is engaged in the business of providing up-linking facility and transponder service to the broadcasters and has been granted a license on 24.01.2003 under Section 4 of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 to establish, maintain and operate the up-inking hub (teleport). It has also obtained license from WPC (Wireless Planning and Coordination), Department of Telecommunications. It is operating the teleport as permitted by respondent No.1 vide its letter bea...
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Aftab Alam, Chairperson. The Dispute: its genesis This batch of cases raises the question about the validity of what is loosely called as intra-circle 3G roaming. Or to put the matter in legalese: whether it is permissible for two mobile phone operators within the same service area/circle, one having its 2G network on the lower frequency 900 MHz (the primary GSM band) or 1800 MHz bands and the other, a 3G network on the higher frequency 2100 MHz band, to enter into a bilateral arrangement under which the subscribers of the former are able to roam on the 3G network of the latter? The frequencies in 2100 MHz or 2.1 GHz (loosely called the 3G spectrum in this country) were allocated by the Central Government to different mobile phone operators on the basis of an auction. As everyone had known from before, owing to the limited availability of spectrum, no single operator was able to get the 3G spectrums in all the 22 circles in the country; some operators got the 3G spectrums in some of th...
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Kuldip Singh: 1. The issues that arise for consideration in this petition are the terms and conditions of the Reference Interconnect Offer (RIO) offered by the respondent to the petitioner and their compliance and conformity with applicable Interconnect Regulations and Tariff Order. The prayer in this petition, inter-alia, is to direct the respondent to make the necessary changes/amendments in its Reference Interconnect Offer including clause 5.6 and 8.2 thereof, so as to bring the same in compliance, and in conformity, with the applicable Interconnect Regulations and the Tariff Order. 2. There is a history of litigation between the parties and in order to understand the present dispute, it is necessary to go into the same briefly. The petitioner is a Direct to Home operator in India providing TV signals to the subscribers. The respondent is the sole and exclusive distributor of the following six TV channels :- 1. ESPN 2. Star Sports 3. Star Cricket 4. ESPN HD 5. Star Sports HD 6. Star...
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Kuldip Singh: 1. The main issues that arise for consideration in these petitions are whether the petitioner can voluntarily provide services through DAS (Digital Addressable System) mode in areas which are not yet notified for providing DAS service; if so, whether the Digital Addressable System installed by the petitioner has any shortcomings and whether it is entitled to receive the signals from the respondents? 2. The petitioner is a Multi System Operator (MSO) who has been granted permission under Rule 11E of The Cable Television Networks Rules, 1994 by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India on 29.6.2012 for operating in areas notified under Section 4A of The Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995. The respondents are broadcasters/agents acting on behalf of the broadcasters. The petitioner has been trying to enter into interconnect agreement and obtain signals of the respondents since November 2012 and not being successful in its efforts, the pre...
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M/s Kal Cable Pvt. Ltd., the petitioner, is a multi-system operator, operating in Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu. It has filed this batch of 28 petitions, each against a cable operator from whom the petitioner seeks recovery of different sums of money as dues of monthly subscription fees. None of the 28 cable operators, respondents in this batch of petitions, appeared despite service of notice. Hence, all the petitions in the batch were proceeded with ex parte. As all the 28 cases are based on similar facts, with the exception of the amounts of money claimed and, in a few cases the date of disconnection of signals, all the 28 petitions were heard together and are being disposed of by this common order. For the sake of convenience, the relevant facts pertaining to the 28 petitions are arranged in a tabular form which is reproduced below: (TABLE) Column no.2 of the table gives the number of petition and column no.3, the name of the respondent, the local cable operator; column no.5 sta...
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Aftab Alam, Chairperson. M/s Praja Cable Net, the petitioner, is a registered cable operator in the area of Proddatur, YSR District, Andhra Pradesh. It is located at 3/1495, Holmespeta, Proddatur “ 516360 and its registration number is TV/127/11-12. It claims a connectivity of 1632 customers. It is a proprietary concern and its proprietor is one Konireddy Sobha Rani, wife of Sri Shiv Chandra Reddy. The petitioner seeks a direction to the respondent, which is a broadcaster of TV channels, to enter into an Interconnect Agreement with it for supply of ETV channels in terms of regulation 3.2 of the Telecommunication (Broadcasting and Cable Services) Interconnection Regulations, 2004. According to the petitioner, it made the request for supply of signals and de-coder boxes for the respondents ETV channels but despite reminders and repeated requests the respondent declined to give its signals and the de-coder boxes to the petitioner. Hence, the petitioner is forced to come to the Tribu...
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Aftab Alam, Chairperson. M/s Unitech Wireless Pvt. Ltd. and M/s Etisalat D. B. Telecom Pvt. Ltd. have approached the Tribunal seeking a direction to the Central Government in the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) to release the œperformance bank guarantees? submitted by them as stipulated in clause 21 of the Unified Access Service licences granted to them by the Union of India under section 4 of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885. Unitech has filed twenty petitions (Petition nos.700 to 719 of 2012) in respect of the twenty different service areas/circles for which the performance bank guarantees were furnished by it. Etisalat has filed four petitions (Petition nos. 658, 659, 672 and 722 of 2012) in respect of the four different service areas/circles to which the bank guarantees sought to be released pertain. The DoT does not deny that with the possible exception of one of the circles, namely West Bengal, it has no claim of any liquidated damages against Unitech for non-performanc...
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Kuldip Singh, Member. 1. In the present petition, an amount of Rs.29,52,872/- is claimed from the respondent no.1 on account of over-payment of subscription charges. The prayers made in the petition relating to the signals of respondent no.1 are not pressed during arguments as the petitioner has stopped taking the signals of this respondent. 2. The petitioner is a proprietorship concern of Mr. R. Kamaraj and is engaged in distribution of cable TV signals in Pappanadu Village in Thanjavur district of Tamilnadu. Respondent No.1 is the distributor of Sun Group of channels. The petitioner was taking the signals of Sun TV and K TV from respondent No.1 with effect from the year 2006. 3. The summary of the petitioners case is as under :- (i) It has made an over-payment of an amount of Rs.29,71,865/- [figure corrected during evidence as Rs. 29,52,872] to the respondent No.1. In support of its claim, it has annexed a statement of accounts at pages 25-28 of the Paper Book. (ii) There was a sudde...
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1. Miscellaneous Application No. 2 of 2014 has been filed by the applicant/petitioner seeking the permission of this Tribunal to switch off the signals of 27 channels of the respondent as mentioned in the notices issued by the petitioner under clauses 6.3 and 6.5 of the Regulations and directing the respondent to charge the petitioner only for the channels which the petitioner intends to transmit. The respondent/applicant has in turn filed the Miscellaneous Application No.6 of 2014 seeking the vacation of the interim order of the Tribunal dated 13.11.2013 and allowing the respondent to disconnect the supply of signals of its channels to the petitioner. The applicant/respondent has also sought direction to the petitioner to pay a sum of Rs.1,44,57,780.01 payable up to 31.12.2013 and such further amount as may become payable till the supply of signals of the respondents channels to the petitioner is continued. 2. As per terms of offer (MOU) signed between the parties, the term of the sam...
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