Big relief for Airtel & Voda as Zero rate regime not for a year |
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Tuesday avoided a disruption in the telecom sector by retaining the current termination rate of 6 paise per minute for another year that is from January 1, 2020, to December 31, 2020, after which the rate will become zero. While reducing the termination rate by a massive 57% to 6 paise per minute in September 2017, Trai had said that from January 2020 operators would move to a regime of zero rate. However, in a consultation paper floated in September 2019 it expressed reservations about moving to a zero rate regime from January 2020 since call imbalance – incoming versus outgoing – amongst the incumbents and Reliance Jio still existed. On Tuesday, while retaining the rate for another year, Trai said that it has to keep the interests of 2G/3G subscribers in mind. At the end of September 2019, out of approximately 1,174 million mobile subscribers, 557 million are 4G data subscribers and the remaining 617 million are still using 2G/3G services. The regulator though said all three private operators have rolled out VoLTE extensively and plans to further expand the 4G networks. Soon the government will also assign 4G spectrum to public sector telcos. Though the incumbent operators welcomed the move of retaining the current rate for one more year they added that ideally it should have been extended by two years.
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