Bharti Airtel today moved the telecom tribunal seeking a directive against Tata Teleservices on payment of Rs 287 crore towards termination charges on SMS.

In September, Bharti had sent demand notices to its competitors seeking SMS termination fee of 10 paisa for every text message.

Notice to Tata tele

The Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) on Tuesday issued a notice to Tata Teleservices and directed it to file its reply within two weeks. The tribunal has also asked Bharti Airtel to file rejoinder over the reply filed by TTSL within a week and directed to list the matter on November 24 for an interim order. Termination charges are paid by an operator from whose network an SMS originates to the one on whose network these messages end. During the proceedings, counsel appearing for Bharti Airtel alleged that TTSL was not paying their due SMS termination charges from 2009 despite several reminders. This was opposed by TTSL's counsel on grounds that there was a system of "bill and keep" in the sector and every player was following that norms.

“Every one keeps a track on the SMS received and forwarded but there was no transaction,” TTSL's counsel said, adding that now Bharti Airtel is suddenly saying that as per the agreement between them, TTSL would have to pay.

New entrants

Bharti Airtel approached the TDSAT even after the telecom regulator cautioned all operators against imposing discriminatory termination charge for SMS. Operators were legally allowed to impose termination charges even for SMS, provided that the levy applied uniformly and non-discriminatorily to all players.

But some of the new players allege that incumbent operators are not imposing the termination charge on each other and ask the new ones to pay up. For new entrants and smaller players, which have lower customer base, the outgoing text messages are several multiple times higher when compared to incoming SMSes. Thus a higher termination charge results in higher costs for them.

Termination charges on SMS and voice calls have been a bone of contention between the operators for a while. Incumbent operators want a higher fee while the newer ones want the fee to be low.

TRAI on Monday filed its report to the Supreme Court suggesting that termination charge for voice calls should be 10 paise a minute from January onwards and should be brought down to zero by 2014. TRAI had also imposed a 5 paise termination charge on commercial SMS.

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