As the debate on IUC charges continues in the country, Reliance Jio says that the review of TRAI is retrograde.

IUC charges are paid normally by a telecom operator for completing calls made by its subscribers to the network of their competitor.

The telecom operator said that the retention of these charges would punish subscribers and efficient operators and reward defaulters.

Reliance Jio said that the review as a retrograde step and the present Consultation Paper is neither warranted nor sustainable as it incentivizes the telecom operators that do not want to shift to IP based technology.

The telecom operator alleged that these charges reward defaulters that purposefully stayed away from new and efficient technologies.

It said that the charges may be justified due to cost recovery. They can also address the unavoidable occurrence of asymmetry in traffic. However, neither of these purposes are solved in the real scenario.

Moreover, they are doing enormous harm to the subscribers and the telecom service providers that are utilizing efficient technologies.

TRAI had proposed earlier to eliminate the charges from January 2020, however it is now reviewing the timeline.

In this context, Jio said that these type of actions deincentivize the telecom operators like Reliance Jio that have adopted the latest technologies.

They will have to review their tariffs and charge customers for voice services which are against the public interest.

Jio argues that the continuation of IUC would benefit the operators that do not deploy latest technologies and cause severe hardship to Jio.

Keeping Airtel and Vodafone in mind, Jio said that the paper of TRAI ignores two private operators that support the extension of IUC. These operators made it mandatory for its subscribers to get minimum prepaid recharges to receive incoming calls.

They are charging their subscribers heavily even for incoming calls.

Image Credit : Nairspecht / CC BY-SA 4.0

Image Reference: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50253203