Bharti Airtel has been directed by the Supreme Court to restore SMS services to the Aircel within 24 hours. Aircel agreed to pay the termination charge of 10 paise per SMS to Airtel.

The apex court also said that this would be subject to the condition that within two weeks from Monday, the appellants shall pay the arrears to the respondent in terms of demand letter dated October 25 and also pay at the rate of 10 paise per SMS from the date of reconnection of SMS services.

Aircel had challenged the sectoral Tribunal TDSAT’s decision which on September 24 had rejected its plea against Bharti Airtel on the issue.

Termination charges are paid by an operator from whose network calls or SMS originate to the one on whose network these communications end.

The major disputes that have emerged so far are- Airtel v/s Aircel, Airtel v/s Reliance Communications and Vodafone v/s Tata Services on termination charges.