Fed up of telcos bickering, TRAI chief rules out floor for call rates

RS Sharma, the chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), has said that a section of telcos has been making "too much of noise," lately.


He also dismissed telcos’ demand to fix the interconnect usage charge (IUC) as the minimum price of a voice call. IUC is the price that a caller's operator pays to the receiving party's operator. Indian telcos like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular had asked TRAI to fix IUC of 14 paisa per minute as the floor for retail voice tariffs.

"There is too much of noise saying that the regulator must fix the minimum price. I don't think that's really a correct thing to do for a regulator. The price is under forbearance; both the top and bottom should be under forbearance. It cannot be that for customers you can raise as much as you want, but you can't take it below a certain threshold," Sharma told ET.

The telcos also demanded a ban on new entrant and arch rival Reliance Jio Infocomm's free voice call offer, which has helped the Mukesh Ambani-led company to gain 100 million subscribers in just 170 days of its launch.

Also read: Reliance Jio submits Dhan Dhana Dhan tariffs with TRAI

Talking about the global issue of net neutrality, Sharma said that TRAI will hold at least three open house discussions and consult experts and academicians before coming out with its recommendations in July.


(Image source Voice&Data)