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Thomas K. Thomas

New Delhi , April 21

IN defiance of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) order imposing access deficit charge on roaming calls, cellular operators have expressed difficulty in implementing it without going through the consultation process.

The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and the Association of Unified Service Providers of India (AUSPI), on Wednesday, in a joint meeting with TRAI officials sought postponement of the order that was slated to come into effect from April 11.

While issuing the order, TRAI said that all calls from the national roaming subscribers would be treated as long distance calls and all calls from international roaming subscribers would be treated as incoming international call for ADC purposes. As such, all calls from national roaming subscribers would attract additional charges of 30 paise per minute and Rs 3.25 per minute for international roaming subscriber making any call while in India.

Cellular operators had said that the TRAI move would result in an increase in the rates of cell-to-cell long distance calls. Industry sources said that the TRAI move came as a surprise since a consultation paper was already under discussion to review the ADC regime.

"The decision to impose additional ADC on roaming comes at a time when the TRAI itself has floated a consultation paper to discuss ADC. They could have waited for the outcome of the consultation process to impose the charges," said a cellular operator.

Cellular operators based on the Global System for Mobile technology and those using the Code Division Multiple Access are united on this issue against TRAI.

Mobile operators said that the additional ADC would increase the quantum of the fee collected which has been pegged by the regulatory authority at around Rs 5,000 crore per annum.

"Since the total quantum of ADC has been put at around Rs 5,000 crore, the decision to impose new levy on roaming should have been offset by reducing the charges elsewhere. TRAI has to re-look at this decision. We have requested the regulator to keep the order in abeyance until a review is done by the authority," said another cellular operator.

Earlier, TRAI had said that the concerns raised by the cellular operators were unwarranted since the long distance tariffs had enough margins for the operators to absorb the additional levy without passing it on to the subscriber.

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