Recently, Upholding an Andhra Pradesh High Court's 2011 ruling, a bench led by Justice Ravindra Bhatt of Supreme Court of India said no sales tax can be imposed on sharing of infrastructure as the same does not fall under the category of goods, a stand taken by the HC. 

Sales tax cannot be levied on SIM cards, value-added services and recharge coupons, Sales tax cannot be levied on value-added services that include wallpapers, ringtones and music downloads as they do not count as 'goods'.

Disposing a batch of over 50 cases on the issue involving various telecom firms including Bharti Airtel, Tata, Vodafone, Idea and BSNL, the apex court rejected the Andhra Pradesh tax department's stand that any intellectual property put in any media would only get classified as 'goods' and never as services.

Earlier in February, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) asked sector regulator TRAI to make the quality of service norms stricter in order to curb call drops and improve call quality. He move comes after the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) collected feedback from the public through an IVRS call around call drop, quality of calls etc.