Idea to refund Rs 23.29 lakh to discriminatly charged customers

New Delhi, Mar 9 (UNI) Idea Cellular, an Aditya Birla Group company, will refund Rs 23.29 lakh to its 1.92 lakh subscribers here, following a notification issued by TRAI in its tariff scheme involving high charges for calling MTNL and BSNL networks.

The leading telecom operator has already refunded Rs 13.59 lakh and the balance has been deposited in a seperate ESCROW account, TRAI said.

A compliance report submitted by Idea to the regulator said the differential tarriff was withdrawn from October 2005.

The company has issued public notice conveying the process of refund.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had disallowed discriminatory tarriffs by Idea Cellular and Hutch in November 2005.

It also issued a warning to Idea for the lapses and delay in complying with the intervention.

The authority viewed such classification as arbitrary and inconsistent with the provisions of Telecommunication Tariff Orders.

''Clause 10 of the Telecommunication Tariff Orders (TTO), 1999 provides that no service provider shall discriminate between subscribers of the same class and such classification of the subscribers shall not be arbitrary,'' it said.

UNI