Mumbai\/New Delhi: The telecom regulator has imposed penalties collectively amounting to Rs 35 crore on eight operators including Bharti Airtel<\/a>, Vodafone Idea<\/a> (Vi) and Reliance Jio<\/a> for allowing cybercriminals to issue fake SMSes to dupe digital payment users.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s penalties are on various counts of violation of the Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulation, documents accessed by ET showed.
The other companies penalised are Videocon, Tata Teleservices<\/a>, Quadrant Teleservices and state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd.
The highest penalty of Rs 30.1 crore was imposed on BSNL, which failed to respond to Trai<\/a>’s show-cause notices and produce performance-monitoring reports, followed by Rs 1.82 crore on Vi, Rs 1.41 crore on Quadrant and Rs 1.33 crore on Airtel.
The move may be a boost for digital payment companies spearheaded by Paytm, which are embroiled in a tussle with the telecom industry in an ongoing case in the Delhi High Court.
At a hearing in September, the court had asked Trai to act against service providers violating regulations to curb spam calls and text messages, as reported by ET.
Paytm had contended that telecom operators had been lax in monitoring the issuance of SMS headers<\/a> to telemarketers, which allowed fraudsters to manipulate their customers. SMS headers are unique IDs through which commercial text messages are sent.
Noida-based Paytm’s stance was mirrored by peers such as PhonePe and MobiKwik in an intervention plea filed in September.
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