Raja wants telcos to cut termination charges

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New Delhi: As tariff wars rage among the mobile operators, the communications and IT minister A Raja on Tuesday in a meeting with the CEOs of the telecom companies requested them to further reduce the termination charge, which would result in tariffs coming down even further. Termination charge is the levy paid by an operator to another on whose network the call terminates.

“I requested the operators that the termination charge can come down further by 2010 and accordingly tariffs can be reduced,” Raja told reporters after the meeting. Interestingly, fixation of termination charge is the domain of the sector regulator, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), which earlier this year reviewed the termination charge and brought it down from Rs 0.30 per minute to Rs 0.20 per minute for domestic (local as well as STD) calls and increased the same from Rs 0.30 to Rs 0.40 for international calls coming to India.

Raja said that there’s the possibility for local call charges to come down to as low as 10 paise a minute and STD tariffs to just 25 paise per minute.

“I have also asked them to optimally utilise the Universal Service Obligation (USO) fund to enhance telecom infrastructure in rural areas. The government is in the process to simplify the rules for getting funds from the kitty,” he said. The government has over Rs 16,000 crore in the fund, which is given to operators for rural telephony projects.

Raja said increasing the rural tele-density was a priority of the government and the operators must go to rural India and set up telecom infrastructure there.