Trai move on interconnect user charge likely to face Reliance Jio challenge

High tariffs on voice calls force 2G, 3G customers to make missed calls to customers on Jio, soliciting a large amount of offnet voice calls from its subscribers to the network of incumbent operators

The move by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to float a discussion paper on deferring its earlier decision of introducing a zero interconnect user charge (IUC) regime in January next year has been questioned by some leading telcos.

According to sources close to Reliance Jio, the telco has squarely blamed incumbent operators, who have kept high voice tariffs for their 2G and 3G customers, discouraging usage, and overdependence on 2G and 3G customers as the key reasons for continuing asymmetry in their own network between their offnet (calls to other competing networks) incoming calls to outgoing calls.  

Sources close to