Trai Floats New Consultation Paper on Review of IUC Regulations and International Termination Charges

There has been a big debate going on in the Indian telecom industry about the Interconnection Usage Charges (IUC). Although IUC sounds like a matter which not many of the consumers would care to know about, the situation of the industry has become such that they have to be concerned about it now. This is courtesy of the latest telecom entrant, Reliance Jio which is now directly charging IUC from its subscribers. However, all this aside, a big hand in shaping the rules of the industry and hence the IUC rules is of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), is the institution which, in the past, has been responsible for bringing down the IUC for the telecom operators by a whopping 70% and is now looking towards a change in regulations again. However, this time Trai has floated a consultation paper which is titled “Review of Interconnection Usage Charges”, but it concerns more with the International Termination Charges (ITC) rather than the domestic termination charges, about which the debate has been going on in the industry since the last few months.

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New Consultation Paper on International Termination Charges

To recall, as per the Trai notification on the matter, the last amendment in the case of IUC rules was made last year in 2018 and “this amendment brought down the termination charge for international incoming call to wireline and wireless networks to Rs.0.30 per minute w.e.f. 01.02.2018.” Since the amendment of these regulations, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has been keeping a close check on the trends and patterns of International Long Distance (ILD) voice traffic in the country. Now, after a period of keeping the check, and tracking the records on the international calling front, Trai has come to the conclusion that it might have to review the International Termination Charges (ITC) from time to time.