TRAI to announce new IUC guideline soon
New Delhi: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is expected to announce a revised interconnect user charge (IUC) regime. This will help reduce the level of cross-subsidisation in the telecom sector and bring down the price paid by the consumer for a telephone call. "TRAI has finalised the principles for the revised IUC regime. Final calculations are going on but the amount of access deficit charge (ADC) is much lower than that estimated earlier. The new policy, that is likely to be announced by next week, will remove the regulatory distortions in the present regime and spread the access deficit across all fixed and cellular service providers," TRAI chairman, Pradip Baijal was quoted as saying.

Under the earlier regime, the element of cross-subsidy was about Rs 13,000 crore in a sector that was worth Rs 40,000 crore. With the growth in the telecom industry, the overall size of the sector has already climbed to Rs 50,000 crore and could cross Rs 1,00,000 crore in the next two years. "As the overall pie would go up, so the element of subsidy will reduce," he said.
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