Yesterday, TRAI issued a consultation paper to review IUC (Interconnection Usage Charges). Managing and reviewing IUC has been an important function of TRAI ever since the introduction of the CPP (Calling Party Pay) regime in India on 24th Jan 2003. The CPP regime prevents the terminating operator to charge for the incoming calls. Hence, for the terminating operator, IUC is the only way to recover the cost of these incoming calls. The originating operator pays IUC to the terminating operator as per rates decided by TRAI. TRAI has in past revised the IUC rates to reflect the true cost of termination, which is changing dynamically with the advancement in technology and other factors.
IUC has various components. These are a) access termination charge – payable by the calling party access provider to the called party access provider; b) International termination charge – payable by international long distance operator (ILDO) to the terminating access provider; c) Transit charge – payable to the transit operator by the access providers; and d) Carriage charge – paid to the national long distance operator by the access provider. The most important of all is the “access termination charge”.
