TRAI says ‘no’ to revenue share on roaming calls

In a major setback for Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Monday disallowed additional revenue sharing between visiting network and terminating networks for roaming calls.

At the same time, Trai expressed its concern about the high roaming tariff prescribedby some operators and indicated that it may review the present roaming tariff regime.



After issuing a consultation paper and discussing the issue, Trai said there is no justification for a revenue sharing arrangement among operators for roaming calls. The regulator also reconfirmed its earlier decision that the terminating operator should get only the prescribed termination charge.

While roaming, if an operator terminates its subscriber calls on another network, it pays the terminating network 30 paise per minute as termination charges. However, BSNL wanted a revenue share agreement over and above the termination charge on the ground that some operators treat the roaming subscriber differently from its own subscriber and charge higher, which is not cost-based.

BSNL urged Trai to fix the amount to be paid by the visiting network operator to the terminating network operator because with the multiplicity of operators, the chances of negotiations succeeding in this regard are remote and may lead to litigations.

Rejecting such demands, Trai observed that in case the termination charge is allowed to be linked with tariff and any additional amount over the specified termination charge is permitted for roaming calls, it may lead to higher roaming tariffs to consumers.