New Delhi, Mar 12: Telecom appellate tribunal has given a go-ahead to Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd to recover Rs 8.7 crores from ISD player data access while dismissing latter's petition alleging it had been wrongly charged the amount in violation of terms of interconnect agreement signed between the parties. The Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) not only dismissed the petition, on which it had earlier restrained MTNL from recovering the dues, but also directed the defaulting company to pay an interest of 10.2 per cent on the amount till its recovery. "During the pendency of this petition, we had granted stay of recovery of the amount of the impugned bill and since we have dismissed the petition the respondent (MTNL) would also be entitled to interest for a period from January 20, 2003 till recovery at the rate of 10.2 per cent per annum," the tribunal said." Under the interconnect agreement signed between the two sides, it had been agreed that starting from fourth month of the start of service, the petitioner would guarantee the handover of at least 20 million minutes of incoming traffic volume to MTNL, and the dispute Centred around interpretation of the term "incoming traffic". Data access argued that incoming traffic included traffic terminating with MTNL as well as traffic transiting through its network and terminating with other service providers.
However, MTNL said the interconnect agreement clearly stated that incoming traffic, in the context of minimum guarentee clause, meant traffic which came into the network of MTNL and terminated within the network.
Bureau Report