Trai to Review Telecom Interconnect Charges This Week

In the previous review, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had reduced interconnect charges, leading to a reduction in tariffs.

"Trai has plans to start process to review IUC (inter usage connection) charges this week," an official source told PTI.

This would be second IUC review by Trai after the one in 2009. The regulation was framed in 2003.

At present, Trai had fixed a mobile call termination charge at Rs. 0.20 per minute for all local and national long-distance charges. This charge earlier varied between Rs. 0.15 to Rs. 0.50 depending on the distance.

This means that a telecom company now pays Rs. 0.20 per minute charge to the other company on whose network call has been made.

The regulator raised the MTC (mobile termination charge) for incoming international calls to Rs. 0.40 per minute from Rs. 0.30, while putting a ceiling on carriage fee of Rs. 0.65 per minute for domestic long-distance calls.

Trai had started a consultation process to review IUC in 2011 but the same was challenged by telecom operators.