The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released a consultation paper on ‘Interconnect Usage Charges (IUC)’. With its release, the consultation paper invites industry stakeholders’ views on the issues pertaining to appropriate mobile termination charge and fixed termination charge, the methodology to estimate these charges along with the appropriate level of international termination charge.  TRAI is of the view that an efficient interconnection and charging regime is important for seamless connectivity between various networks.

The IUC facilitates subscribers of one service provider to connect to the other service providers’ subscribers. Since the interconnection involves a cost, the IUC regime would decide on the revenue from such services along with how the revenue should be shared between the service providers.

In 2003, TRAI had specified the IUC regime followed by revision in charges in 2006 and 2009. In the current regime of 2009, the mobile call termination charges for all local and national long-distance stand at Re 0.20 per minute, while the termination charge for incoming international long distance calls is Re 0.40 per minute.

Prior to this in May 2013, TRAI had issued SMS Termination Charges Regulations 2013, imposing Re 0.05 as termination charge on each transactional SMS and Re 0.02 on each normal SMS on operators from whose network the message originates.