The Department of Telecommunications has sought the country's telecom users' help to check illegal re-routing of international calls, which has eroded the national exchequer's revenues by a whopping Rs 5,000 crore (Rs 50 billion).
This comes after a series of attempts to curb the menace, including stringent penalties and cancellation of licences, which were not successful.
Illegal re-routing of international calls is done in guise of local calls by private players, resulting in evasion of connectivity and Access Deficit Charges (ADC).
The department's Vigilance Telecom Monitoring cell has now set up a call centre with toll-free numbers (800110420 and 1963) to seek public participation.
The cell has begun sending out SMSes to mobile users in the metros to begin with, which will be extended to other circles in the country, a source in the telecom ministry said.
VTM cell is sending out messages requesting subscribers to inform the cell when they receive a re-routed call. The cell is also educating users to identify an illegally re-routed call.
According to a source, "If while receiving an international call, local or STD number is displayed on screen, it means the call is an illegal one".
The accounted losses for the national exchequer were around Rs 1,800 crore (Rs 18 billion) in 2003, which rose to around Rs 4,900 crore (Rs 49 billion) by the end of 2007. This is slated to rise to around Rs 6,000 crore (Rs 60 billion) by the end of this year, an industry analyst said.
Illegal re-routing of calls also poses a threat to national security as these calls cannot be monitored. Moreover, the government's goal of increasing rural teledensity would also be hampered as the government uses the ADC fund to subsidise rollout of telecom services in rural and semi-urban sectors.
Re-routing is also against the provisions of the Telephone Regulatory Authority of India Act, 1997.
Earlier, DoT had imposed a Rs 150 crore (Rs 1.5 billio) fine on Reliance Infocomm (now Reliance Communications) in 2005. FIRs were also filed against Tata Teleservices and L&T Infotech.
