Bharti Airtel Seeks Postponement of Zero IUC Regime By Another 3 Years from Trai

Sunil Bharti Mittal led telecom operator, Bharti Airtel has asked the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to postpone its plans of migrating to the Zero-IUC regime by a total of three years. It is worth noting that currently, the telecom regulator is ideating on whether or not it should postpone the transition to a zero-IUC regime by two years. However, as per an ET Telecom report, Bharti Airtel wants to further this timeline by a year. The telco has raised this demand on the grounds that network symmetry has not yet been achieved the industry and more than 400 million users continue to use the 2G network, as per the regulator. According to the previous plan of the telecom regulator, the industry was to make a shift to a zero-IUC regime by January 2020 from the existing IUC price of 6 paise per minute. This would have meant that the operators would not have to pay anything in the name of IUC.

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Bharti Airtel Urges Trai to Delay Shift to Zero IUC

The telecom regulator had also sought submissions, comments and counter comments on its consultation paper over the Interconnect Usage Charges (IUC) and whether or not it should defer these charges by a few years. To this, Bharti Airtel had replied that “The (London-based) GSMA too has predicted that 12-13% of customers will continue to use 2G handsets till 2025.” Bharti Airtel also added that that the traffic from the 4G only operator continues to be on the higher side in terms of both magnitude and percentage, thus implying that the industry has not yet achieved traffic symmetry. While Bharti Airtel stands with the idea of deferring the shift to a zero-IUC regime, the Mukesh Ambani led telco and the Airtel rival, Reliance Jio, does not support the same idea.