13.2 The Appellant has further stated that the Respondent in compliance of this Tribunal’s order, disclosed the cost methodology / calculation in arriving at the cost figure of 8.56 lakhs per E-1 circuit in the tariff order of 11th March 2005. While the Appellant’s submission of wrongful exclusion of certain costs, towards calculating total cost, was accepted however the Respondent changed the rules by adopting a different denominator for calculating per unit cost of E-1 circuit, so that it could retain its previous assessment of cost as well as tariff levels. The erroneous assumptions of the respondent on being corrected, the revised cost figure would be 13.09 lakhs per E-1 circuit. Instead of accepting this figure of Rs.13.09 lakhs as cost per E-1 circuit and thereafter refixing the tariffs, if at all, on such basis, the Respondent for arriving at the per unit cost divided the total cost by the quantity utilized (which includes restoration and redundant capacity), which is a new and higher denominator as opposed to the previous denominator of quantity sold adopted for calculating per unit cost in the consultation paper as well as in the Tariff Order of 11 March 2005. It has been pointed out that TRAI had earlier arrived at a figure of cost of Rs.11.84 lakhs per E-1 circuit in its consultation paper, which correcting for its erroneous assumptions M/s Boston Consulting Group (BCG) had revised the cost estimates to Rs.18.16 lakhs per E-1 circuit and further revised by the TRAI itself to a figure in the range of Rs.7.4 to 9.0 lakhs in the Tariff Order of 11 March 2005, on which due to the methodology and calculation not being shared with VSNL & TRAI, this Tribunal had by order of 28th April 2005 directed the disclosure / sharing of relevant information with VSNL.
