The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has today issued the Consultation Paper on “Review of Interconnection Usage Charges”. It is focused on review of the existing regulatory regime for International Termination Charges (ITC).
The last amendment in IUC regulation was done in 2018 which brought down the termination charge for international incoming call to wireline and wireless networks to Rs.0.30 per minute.
TRAI said that it has been continuously monitoring the developments in the telecommunications market, and trends in incoming and outgoing ILD voice traffic volume. While analysing, the Authority noted that the characteristics of the telecommunications market in India as well as rest of world is changing very fastly.
The regulator observed that the domestic market composition is changing from voice centric to data centric, and the tariff offerings are changing from pricing of individual products like voice, data, messages etc. to bundled offers comprising of voice, data, and messages together. Similarly, in case of international roaming also, tariff packages for bundles comprising of certain pre-fixed quantity of incoming and outgoing voice calls, data, and messages are becoming popular.
TRAI has collected the data relating to international incoming and outgoing voice traffic through carrier
route and analysis of this data indicates that the rate of decline of international incoming voice traffic through carrier route has reduced after the revision of ITC rates in 2018.
The telecom regulator has invited comments on this consultation paper from stakeholders by December 9, counter-comments can be submitted till 23rd December.
