The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has issued an amendment on regulations on termination charges titled ‘Telecommunications Interconnection Usage Charges (IUC) (11^th Amendment) Regulations’. With the amendment, the mobile termination charges (MTC) for all calls originating from a wireless network have been reduced from Re 0.20 per minute to Re 0.14 per minute. Further, in order to promote deployment of wireline networks, TRAI has prescribed zero fixed termination charges (FTC) as well MTC for wireline to wireless calls. However, the termination charges for international incoming calls have been increased from the existing Re 0.40 per minute to Re 0.53 per minute.

In the prevailing regime, the calling party is supposed to pay for his calls to his telecom service provider who, in turn, pays the termination charges to the called party’s operator as interconnection network usage cost.

The amendment follows the regulator’s decision to review IUC charges in November 2014. Subsequently, TRAI issued a consultation paper to seek comments from the various stakeholders to prescribe these revised charges.