Bharti airtel has opposed the consultation paper issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to review interconnection usage charges (IUC). This, according to the operator, was because the review was not being carried out in accordance with the directions of the Telecom Disputes Settlement & Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) and the Supreme Court and hence needed to be reframed.
In a letter to TRAI, the operator said, ?We are surprised to note that the consultation paper released by TRAI on April 27, 2011, has not taken into consideration the observations and directions of either the Supreme Court or the TDSAT.?
TRAI had sought comments on whether the termination charge, a levy paid by an operator to another operator on whose network the call ends, should be abolished. Operators pay one another IUC for using each other’s network to complete calls.
In this case, given that over 90 per cent of subscribers are registered with old operators, these players have been opposing any move to do away with termination charge while the new operators are supporting the idea, saying this would give them a level playing field.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court had asked TRAI to implement TDSAT?s decision dated September 29, 2009, with regard to IUC within four months. Referring to the TDSAT decision, airtel said the framework proposed by the tribunal mentions that the termination charge should be cost based and on a work done principle and not on the basis of bill and keep, wherein all costs, including operational and capital expenditure, should be included in calculation of IUC.
According to TRAI, cost-based interconnection charges have a strong economic rationale. However there is no single, simple way to measure interconnection costs. In the bill and keep method, operators do not pay any termination charges to each other. This approach implies levying no charges on interconnecting carriers at all. Each telecom operator bills its own customers for outgoing traffic that it sends to the other network, and keeps all the revenue that results.
