Cellular operators have opposed a common interconnect exchange as proposed by Trai saying it will increase tariffs and affect service quality."There will be a considerable increase in carriage charges, which will adversely impact the margins/customer tariffs. The quality of service will also suffer due to additional switching stage and longer haulage of all internetwork calls," Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said in a representation to the telecom regulator.A common interconnect exchange for the entire circle will have considerable disadvantages visa-a-vis the existing system of direct inter-connection, it said.COAI has favoured an inter-carrier billing clearing house. "Such a clearing house should be initiated as a first step. It has already been taken by the cellular industry as all roaming charges are settled through an independent clearing house," it said.In a multi-operator, multi-service environment, several types of interconnections will be required - resulting in a large number of separate trunk groups for providing direct interconnection, the association said.According to COAI, major concerns in using a common interconnect exchange are an additional switching stage that will be added for all inter-networks calls and the average carriage distance that will increase considerably."The augmentation of capacity of points of interconnection will solely depend on the interconnect exchange operator. This will lead to congestion of traffic and detoriation of quality of service," COAI said.
