A Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia and Justice K.S. Panicker Radhakrishnan and Justice Swatanter Kumar gave the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) four more months to regulations pertaining to interconnection usage charges (IUC), according to news reports. Prior to this, TRAI had appealed to the Supreme Court, challenging a Telecom Disputes Settlement Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) judgement dated September 29, 2009.
The TDSAT, on petitions by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and private operators had remanded the issue back to TRAI with the direction that TRAI will complete the consultation process in a time bound manner so that new IUC charges could be made effective and implemented by January 1, 2011.
In 2009, TRAI had issued regulations which had brought down IUC, which are paid by one telecom service provider to another for using the network. By the new IUC regulations TRAI had set a uniform ceiling of Rs 65 per minute, for all domestic calls, on charges in both high traffic urban areas as also low traffic rural, remote and hilly areas. The charge for international incoming call was fixed at Rs 40 per minute uniformly. Further, carriage charge for intra-circle cellular calls was reduced from Rs 20 per minute to Rs 15 per minute.
BSNL had challenged these regulations in the TDSAT, seeking permission for mutual negotiation for fixing of termination charges on incoming ILD traffic. in case mutual negotiation fail, the incumbent had wanted to fix the same between rupees Rs 3 and Rs 4 per minute. BSNL also wanted Rs 1.43 per minute for carriage of traffic in rural, remote, hilly and inaccessible areas.
Other contentions regarding calculations and accounting process were raised by the Cellular Operators Association of India, the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India, Vodafone Essar Gujarat, Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Aircel and Etisalat DB Telecom Limited.
Today in court, TRAI was represented by Attorney General Goolam E. Vahanvati, Idea Cellular by advocate Navin Chawla, the Cellular Operators Association of India by senior counsels CA Sundaram and Gopal Jain, Bharti Airtel by Gopal Jain and Vodafone Essar by senior advocates Abhishek M. Singhvi and Gopal Jain.
