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GAIL held an ISP licence between 2002 and 2015, which it claims it never used
India’s department of telecoms has written to state owned gas and utility provider GAIL, asking it to pay unpaid dues of around 1.7 billion lakh crore rupees (1.7 trillion Indian rupees is approximately $24 billion at today’s conversion rate).
Last month, India’s Supreme Court ruled that the Department of Telecoms was owed $13bn by Indian telcos and internet service providers, over a miscalculation in the way the companies calculate their adjusted gross revenues.
GAIL obtained a 15 year ISP licence in 2012, which expired in 2017. However, the national utility provider did not make use of the licence and never branched out into providing broadband services.
Sources close to the matter told journalists from The Times of India that the outstanding dues
being claimed by the Department of Telecoms amount to more than three times the net worth of GAIL and exceed it’s total revenues earned during that period.
GAIL maintains that it owes no money to the DoT since it never did any business under its ISP licence.
India’s telecoms sector is still reeling from the Supreme Court’s ruling, which left various telcos liable for a share of an initial $13 billion of debt (a figure which has been steadily rising, since the judgement). The country’s second and third biggest telcos by subscribers, Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel, have both been forced into taking drastic measures to try and raise the necessary capital to finance their share of the debt.
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