TRAI's Deciding If Call Termination Charges Should Be Abolished. Here's Why You Should Care.

Two years ago, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India decided that it would get rid of IUC charges between telcos starting in 2020. Now, they're inviting public comments on whether that deadline should be reviewed. But here's why you need to pay attention to what's going on.

IUC here stands for interconnect usage charges. It's an arrangement that basically governs how you call people on a different network from you. Telcos basically make it possible to connect across each others' networks. Then when you call someone who has a different mobile service provider than you, your telecom operator pays for it.

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For instance, if you have a Jio plan and call someone with an Airtel plan, Jio is currently required to pay Airtel Rs 0.06 per minute of that call. Since this sort of call uses the receiver's network infrastructure as well, it's an incentive to not have them dropping calls.

Now, we're technically in a "calling-party pays" regime (CPP). That means the calling customer pays their subscriber, who pays the subscriber of the person on the other network. Essentially, the charge is passed down to you. Of course, for a while now that hasn't actually involved you paying directly. While the IUC used to be Rs 0.14, it was lowered to 6 paise in October 2017. Additionally, thanks to how Jio upturned the market, telcos have been scrambling to make their plans more tantalizing. In a lot of cases, that meant things like monthly plans for unlimited calls. So technically, you could call other networks much more than you'd have to pay this amount.

Increased call drops?

The point being, TRAI's plan was to shift to a Bill and Keep (BAK) system starting January 1, 2020. That means all interconnected telecom networks agree to terminate each others' calls for free. Which means, your available plans could possibly get a little cheaper once more. But it also means call drops could become more prolific if the telcos start messing around again.

TRAI is currently looking at postponing that deadline, partly because it feels there's still an imbalance at play. Switching regimes right now would be fine for Jio for instance. They have the most subscribers by far, and therefore a lot of people will be calling within the network, netting them no extra charges. It would hurt Airtel the most however, because the tend to host more incoming calls than outgoing, cutting off a decent chunk of their revenue.

"Though the imbalance in the inter-operator off-net traffic is reducing over a period, it still exists," TRAI said. Telcos have already been keeping up with the issue, providing TRAI with their opinions and insights, but the telecom watchdog is interested in what other parties have to say.

The last date for comments on the paper is October 18 and for counter comments November 1, 2019.