The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has amended the intelligent network services norms.
The amendments have been made with a view to facilitate agreements between the service providers in a time-bound manner for intelligent network services like virtual calling card (VCC) which are offered by the long distance service providers, and free phone services.
According to TRAI, currently VCCs are not much in use. Since, they are mainly operator specific, they cannot be accessed by all the subscribers. With the new framework in place, following the agreements between the service providers, the subscribers will be able to make subscriber trunk dialing and international subscribing dialing calls using calling cards issued by all the operators.
At present, Department of Telecommunications issues different types of licences to operators. Some of the operators have Unified Access Services Licences which allows them to provide all kind of telecom services. However, there are few operators who have permits to only provide either national long distance (NLD) or international long distance (ILD) services. The TRAI amendment will allow even these operators to provide NLD and ILD calling facilities to consumer through VCCs.
