The Hindu Business Line : New ADC to drive up mobile roaming costs

MOBILE roaming will be dearer with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) imposing Access Deficit Charge (ADC) on international and domestic roaming calls.

TRAI on Monday said that all calls from national roaming subscribers would be treated as STD calls, while those of global roaming users will be accounted as incoming international calls for ADC calculation.

Until now, mobile subscribers using the roaming facility did not have to pay the deficit charge if the call was made to another mobile phone within the same circle. After the TRAI order, a Delhi subscriber roaming in Chennai, for instance, will have to pay Rs 0.30 per minute more for all calls made to another mobile phone in Chennai. There will be no impact on calls made to fixed line telephones, since operators are already paying ADC on cell-to-fixed calls. An international roaming subscriber, while making any call in India, will have to pay an ADC of Rs 3.25 per minute. The ADC is to be collected by the visited network operator and paid to state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd for rolling out telephone lines in rural sectors.

Defining the national and international roaming calls for calculating the ADC, TRAI said, "It is national roaming when the visited network and the home network of the subscriber are in the same country and it is international roaming when the visited network and the home network of the subscriber are in different countries."

Responding to the TRAI order, Mr T. V. Ramachandran, Director-General, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), said, "The order is anti-consumer and is uncalled for, especially since TRAI is reviewing the entire ADC regime. One does not find the rationale for imposing such a charge that will put an additional burden on the consumers." COAI officials said that the operators may approach the Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal to challenge the TRAI order.

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