Reliance, Bharti hammer out interconnect deal
MANOJ GAIROLA
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
[ MONDAY, JANUARY 20, 2003 01:56:54 AM ]
NEW DELHI: Reliance Infocomm has skirted Trai territory by building its own bridge into the domain of private cell operators. It has fashioned an interconnect MoU with large cell companies, passing up for now State-owned BSNL & MTNL, the main carriers of calls emanating from fixed-line and WLL networks.
Private basic and cell companies hope this private link will mount enough pressure on the regulator and the government to find a way through the logjam that put cells on the blink in the past two days. Under the proto-MoU, an interim affair till it gets Trai approval, both cellular and fixed-line operator Reliance will pay each other termination charges at the rate of 38 paise a minute, an added cost to the consumer.
In the main, Bharti and Reliance Infocomm have scripted this MoU but other cell companies are expected to follow suit. Tata Tele & HFCL are a bit chary about inking agreements but will go ahead with the proposal.
At present, under the Trai-approved tariff regime, cellular operators are paid nothing for terminating—jargon for putting through—calls from fixed-liners. However, when a call from a cellular phone is terminated in a fixed line, the cellular operator collects two charges from the caller — the airtime charge that the cellco retains and an access charge of Rs 1.20 that is passed on to the fixed-liner in favour of terminating the call in its network.
Under the new MoU, for a call from a cell phone to a Reliance fixed line/WLL-mobile phone, the cellular operator in whose network the call originates will collect from its subscriber the airtime charge as at present and an access charge of Re 0.38 per minute.
The cellco will then pass on the access charge to Reliance. If the cellphone call is less than two minutes, the total cost of this call will be lower than the cost of such a call at present from a cell phone to a fixed line phone of BSNL / MTNL.
When a call is put through from a Reliance phone and terminated in a cellular network, Reliance will charge its customer its own charge of Re 0.40 a minute plus an access charge of Re 0.38 a minute. The access charge collected will be passed on to the cellular network in which the call was terminated. In this regime, fixed line subscribers will pay for access to a cellular network, which does not happen under the interconnect agreement now in force between the cellular and state owned basic operators.
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