Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has revealed that it will retain the Interconnection Usage Charges (IUC) for one more year. The regulator has revealed that it will scrap the charges from January 01, 2021.
“On the basis of comments received from stakeholders in writing and during the open house discussion, and its own analysis, the Authority has prescribed the revised date of applicability of Bill and Keep (BAK)regime i.e. zero termination charges in respect of wireless to wireless domestic calls w.e.f 1st January 2021 through these Regulations,” TRAI said in a statement.
For those who are not aware, interconnection Usage Charges (IUC) is a charge that has to be paid by the service provider whose users originates a call from its network to other service provider network. As for the norms, the operator has to pay 6 paise per minute to other operators. With this, the charges will remain in effect until December 31, 2020.
This comes as a relief to two operators, Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel. With this, both the operators ill receive some IUC payments from other telecom operators. Both the operators are already facing a huge loss. Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea are one of the most stressed operators at this time as the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) is long overdue. Both the operators have a combined AGR due to around Rs 89,000 crore. Vodafone Idea is the worst affected telecom operator with India’s worst quarterly loss of Rs 50,921.9 crore.