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With a view to curb the menace of grey Internet telephony market and to check flourishing of illegal telephone exchanges in the country, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has decided to recover the revenue losses by imposing penalty against such erring Internet Service Providers (ISPs) whose Internet leased lines were found being misused. 

Consequent to this, penalty has been imposed on defaulting ISPs namely, Dishnet DSL Ltd, Spectranet Ltd and Primus Telecommunication India Ltd of Rs 2.28 crore, Rs 2.34 crore and Rs nine lakh respectively. These ISPs have failed to ensure compliance of licensing conditions and directions issued by the DoT. The other defaulting ISPs would face similar action by the department. 

Internet leased lines of ISPs have been found being misused for switching the international calls to public switched telephone network (PSTN) bypassing duly permitted networks of national long distance, international long distance and basic services operators. In some cases, pre-paid cards have also been used to originate calls from PSTN numbers, which were switched to international numbers through Internet illegally. 

DoT's ISP license agreement without Internet telephony strictly prohibits telephony on Internet. DoT''s ISP license agreement that permits Internet telephony, prohibits origination of a call from any PSTN number within the country, termination of call to PSTN number within the country and establishing gateway between Internet and PSTN/ISDN/PLMN in India. Besides this, the DoT has issued detailed instructions to the ISPs to carry out regular inspection to check such misuse of their Internet leased lines. 

DoT is carrying out such raids and random checks from to time through out the country. 

CyberMedia News