The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has directed Jazz and Telenor Pakistan to pay a late payment fee of $60.792 million combined or $30.54 million each as an additional fee on account of delay in making payment of license renewals.
Both the operators are directed to make the payment of the said outstanding dues within seven (07) days from the date of receipt of the order, and in case of non-compliance of order, the matter will be processed further as per applicable law without any further notice.
A panel comprising PTA Chairman Amir Azeem Bajwa, Member Compliance and Enforcement Dr. Khawaja Siddiqui Khokhar, and Member Finance Muhammad Naveed heard the issue of late payment and issued orders against the two operators.
For background, in case you are not familiar with, both Jazz and Telenor had challenged the new fee structure for the licenses and hence they had approached court for the resolution of the dispute.
Cellular licenses for both the operators were due to expire in May 2019 and the fee for renewal was set as $449 million by the PTA.
Not to mention, both the operators had acquired the same license in 2004 for $291 million.
Due to such increase in fee, Jazz and Telenor approached court with contention that the revision in license fee was unjustified.
PTA ultimately won the case but during the process, since the case was in court, the renewal fee was paid late (in Dec 2021) and hence now PTA has imposed a fine or maybe call it late payment fee that both operators are directed to submit with in seven days now.
While we don’t have official confirmations, but it is likely that this new directive is likely to be challenged in the court again.
It must be specified here that PTA had sent a payment notice to both the operators back in 2021, which was not paid. A show cause notice was also issued to both the operators for the same, and above order was issued after deliberation and hearings from both the operators.
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