After spectrum wars, the next big battle brewing in the telecom space is over inter-operator charges. New entrants, including Reliance Jio and Videocon, have urged the telecom regulator to bring the charges down to zero. On the other hand, the incumbents, including Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, want to retain these charges.

The difference of opinion came out in the open at a recent meeting of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), in which the new players accused the industry body of toeing the bigger operators’ line.

Technically called a termination charge, the inter-operator charge is a fee paid by the operator on whose network the call originates to the operator on whose network the call terminates. The existing fee, fixed in 2009, is 20 paise a minute.

Larger players benefit

This arrangement has been beneficial to players with a larger subscriber base because they end up getting more incoming calls. For example, the total outgoing calls from Videocon to Airtel are much larger than the number of incoming calls Videocon receives. Thus Videocon ends up paying the charges to Airtel all the time.

The immediate trigger for the debate is the consultation paper floated by regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) seeking comments from the industry.

According to sources in the industry, the COAI, which met on December 5 to discuss its stand, could not arrive at a consensus, with four members in favour of zero charges and the three big players against it.

Since the voting system in COAI gives more weight to operators with a larger subscriber base, the industry body has decided to oppose any move to remove the termination charges.

This has peeved the new members, including Reliance Jio, which has accused COAI of not representing the “majority” view in the association.

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