Reliance Jio and Tata Teleservices Limited (which owns the Tata Docomo brand) has opposed a petition filed by Airtel and Vodafone in the Delhi HC which seeks to change TRAI’s existing Interconnect usage charges (IUC) levied on operators, reports PTI. Airtel and Vodafone have specifically challenged fixing of termination charges for landline to wireless as 0 paise and wireless to wireless at 14 paise per minute. The report quoted P Chidambaram, senior advocate appearing for Airtel and Vodafone, that teclos who have smaller customer base are not at “disadvantage” instead operators with larger customer base are “suffering” due the regulation. “If somebody is using my infrastructure and earning revenue, they have to share it with me and I should also get some revenue out of it…Sharing the revenue does not mean that somebody will collect the revenue and will not share it with me. Sharing the revenue can never mean 100 on the one side and zero on the other,” Chidambaram told the bench according to the report. When a subscriber initiates a voice call, the telco pays IUC charges in form of termination charges to another telco, whose network the call terminates on. TRAI currently charges IUC on the basis of the type of network the call originates or terminates on: VoIP providers v/s Telecom operators TRAI issued a consultation paper in June asking if VoIP apps like Ringo, Nanu, etc that transfer calls to and from landline/mobile networks need to be regulated under an IUC regime. Responding to the paper, telecom lobbying…
