Statsguru: Incumbent telcos to face the heat

Last week, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) slashed the mobile interconnect usage charge (IUC) to six paise per minute from 14 paise earlier. While the rate cut was slightly below analyst expectations, it is the steepest reduction (in terms of per cent change) to date, as shown in Chart 1. Trai has now proposed to phase out the IUC by 2020. 

India has one of the lowest IUC rates in the world. As shown in Chart 2, the IUC rate in India is lower than those of other developing economies such as Indonesia and Malaysia, and is even behind