The Hindu Business Line : BSNL, pvt cell cos lock horns over roaming revenue

PRIVATE cellular operators have locked horns with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) after the State-owned company demanded 50 per cent of the revenues earned from international roaming calls terminating on its network. BSNL has also sought to change the call routing arrangement and the interconnect usage charges for domestic long distance calls originating on the cellular operator's network.

In a note to all telecom service providers, BSNL has said that since most operators charge Rs 100 a minute from consumers from other countries roaming into India, 50 per cent of the revenue should be given to BSNL. "If the cellular operators can charge Rs 100 a minute from consumers they must pay a part of that to BSNL and MTNL when the international roaming consumer makes a call to our network," said a BSNL official.

The Cellular Operator's Association of India (COAI) has, meanwhile, written to the Department of Telecom (DoT) and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) that the BSNL move was against consumer interest. "Such a revenue sharing arrangement on retail tariff charges is completely against any of the TRAI-notified regulations," COAI said.

In order to resolve the dispute, TRAI held a meeting with senior BSNL officials on Tuesday,

Reacting to BSNL's demands to change the call routing arrangement, the cellular operators said, "By insisting on such an arrangement, BSNL is seeking to recover additional carriage charges from cellular operators which is not in consumer interest as any such arrangement, besides resulting in inefficient interconnection arrangement, increases roaming charges for all subscribers."

But BSNL said the move was aimed at tackling the issue of routing long distance calls as local calls. The company has asked all operators to terminate all inter-circle calls at level one exchange (meant for routing long distance calls). At present, private operators are allowed to terminate calls at level-two exchange (meant for local calls). COAI has said changing the routing norms would only increase the cost since BSNL would be demanding a higher usage charge for carrying the calls through a larger distance.

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