Afghanistan Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (ATRA) fines Telecom and Internet Companies

A press conference was held in the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology in this regard and attended by Engineer Abdul Wakil (Shergul), Chairman of the ATRA Board, Engineer Khair Mohammad (Faizi), Member of the ATRA Board, Engineer Ata Mohammad (Yari), Member of the ATRA Board, Ghulam Jailani (Waziri), the Minister’s office Director, Board of the Ministry Delagate and some other participants.

At the outset of the press conference, Engineer Khair Mohammad Faizi said “ATRA works within Ministry of Communications & Information Technology in an independent, transparent, purposeful and non-discriminatory manner and it is the solely responsible body in the Telecommunications sector across the country”.

Any Telecom Company did not observe procedure of the SIM registration in 1389 each was fined two million Afghani based on the provisions of the Telecom Services Regulation Law. Total fine is (10,960,000) Afghani in addition to 12 percent fine, for the Telecom companies did not pay fines imposed on them on time.

As per provisions of the Telecom Services Regulation Law and conditions set in the issued licenses, the companies are required to provide high quality services.  In order to measure quality of the service, ATRA has procured new and modern equipment to measure quality of service in center and provinces in each quarter.

As the companies provided poor services and have not paid fines imposed on them since 2007, total fine is (51,269,993) Afghani in addition to 12 percent fine due to the fact that they did not pay their fines to the government at due time. From 2007 till 2010, a total of 51,269,993 Afghani fines imposed on Mobile companies due to low quality of service and breaches of the conditions set in their licenses. Lately, a total of 15.12,000 Afghani has been paid to the government. The Mobile Companies, which have not paid their fines at due time, are notified once again by ATRA to pay fines imposed on them to the government treasury within two weeks. If they do not pay their fines within two weeks, ATRA will take more serious actions in this regard according to the provisions of the Telecom Services Regulation Law.

Some of the Internet Companies were fined too because they had to filter illegal sites, install software for filtering of the mentioned sites and block them, but a lot of net cafes had not filtered and blocked the illegal sites. After these net cafes were detected by the control and supervising team of the ATRA, the following companies were fined as follows:

HQN Net Café 25000 Afghani

Roshnai Net Café 25000 Afghani

Alexplural Net Café 25000 Afghani

Based on the provisions of the Telecom Services Regulation Law, no any company reserves the right to provide services without any authorizing license issued by the ATRA. The following companies, which were providing internet services without any authorizing license, were fined as follows:

1-      Business Center 500000 Afghani

2-      IDIL Company 500000 Afghani

3-      Sara Sary Dostan Copmany 500000 Afghani

4-      Green Almuen 500000 Afghani

During the press conference, it was pointed out that ATRA has set deadline to the above mentioned internet companies and net cafes to receive their licenses from ATRA as soon as possible.