The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has issued a policy directive to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) stating that access deficit charge (ADC) should be levied on a percentage share basis of annual revenue rather than on the existing per-minute basis. This is expected to reduce national long distance (NLD) tariffs by at least 10 per cent and benefit more than 100 million subscribers of fixed and mobile telephony. The directive also emphasises that no ADC should be levied on revenues generated from rural subscribers paying regulated tariffs.
On international calls, the directive states that the ADC on revenues earned from ISD calls should be higher than that from NLD calls and that access providers should be allowed to negotiate termination charges for international calls terminating/ originating from their networks. In a controversial move DoT has also asked TRAI to consult the communications ministry before it takes any steps to revise the ADC amount, or the manner in which ADC is calculated.
