TRAI lambasts COAI; to announce Basic tariff by week-end
NEW DELHI, JAN 22 (PTI)
outlookindia.com
Denouncing the 'pressure tactics' adopted by cellular operators and rejecting the chrages of favouratism, telecom regulator TRAI today said it would announce the revised tariffs for basic telecom services in the next 2-3 days.
Lambasting cellular operators for "trying to put pressure on the regulator and even trying to influence the judicial proceedings", TRAI Chairman M S Verma said the regulator could only be influenced by the consumer interest and would work for the betterment of the telecom industry.
"We are announcing revised tariffs for basic services in next two-three days. Regulation over Interconnection User Charge (IUC) is part of overall exercise and cannot be determined in an isolated manner," Verma told PTI in an interview.
Verma's comments come in the wake of the wrangle between the regulator and cellular operators who had charged that TRAI was favouring service providers offering WLL-based limited mobility services.
Verma said new tariffs have been worked out and these would be announced in the next 2-3 days.
Verma said the cellular industry knew that revised tariff for basic telecom services, of which IUC is part, were coming out within days and not weeks, still they (cellular opebators) created a situation last week and "we lost that time by handling unnecessary business." TRAI has to work out all types of charges, be it IUC, call charges, domestic long distance (STD), whether from basic to cellular or vice versa, Verma said, adding, in all these, the objective is affordability and sharing between the operators.
Asked whether the so-called pressure tactics of cellular industry would influence the final calculations of TRAI, Verma said "decisions were taken based on full data on all types of telecom services and there is no scope to get influenced by any pressure." As part of tariff revision TRAI would be announcing among other things call charges in the rural areas, how much free calls should be offered there, local call charges and STD rates along with inter-network call charges.
Calls upto 200 kms, which have been converted into local calls though with different pulse rate, was the most crucial part in the tariff revision exercise as "upto 45 per cent of the total calls are made in this category," Verma said. |
