Sources in the Department of Telecom (DoT) told The Financial Express that the mammoth exercise of upgrading close to 25,000 local exchanges all over the country is unlikely to be completed in time to meet the August 1 deadline.

"Not only do we have to change the trunk automatic exchanges (TAX) to support the CPP feature, we will also have to change the entire billing software as all calls to cellular phones will be charged on the periodic metering basis," sources said.

DoT sources added that this may not be the only reason for the delay. "The laissez-faire policy adopted by Trai in the point of interconnection (PoI) has also complicated the exercise." Citing the experience of the United States, an official said, "Even the US took close to five years to implement the CPPuniformly".

Sources said that with Trai allowing a cellular service provider to get PoI from the nearest exchange relative to his network, the comparatively older E 10 B and C-DoT exchanges have been added to the long list of exchanges slated for revamp. The core issue here is that a number of DoT switches do not have the facility of detailed billing over incoming as well as outgoing junctions. Earlier, PoI was to be provided only from the Level 1 TAX, which is one of the latest exchanges based on new technology that supports a number of features including the calling line identification (CLI) feature. The changes will punch a small but considerable hole in DoT/MTNL finances, with the off-line billing software packages being of particular concern in terms of their cost.

However, DoT officials maintain that they remain committed to the CPP. In fact, DoT issued instructions to all the telecom circles in March to examine the status of DoT switches at PoI.

The circles were asked to either upgrade orcompletely replace the existing switches with other advanced switches to support the detailed billing function. Alternatively, telecom circle heads have been asked to shift the PoI to a switch that supports detailed billing on incoming and outgoing junctions. The Kerala telecom circle submitted its report on this on April 13 this year. The remaining telecom circles is currently involved in achieving compliance for the CPP.

Meanwhile, Trai on its part is grappling with all these issues. Sources said a number of meetings were held last week to resolve the issues. One of the issues relates to the share of the charge for a call made from a landline to a mobile phone. While Trai had suggested that the call be billed at Rs 3.90 per minute, with 85 per cent going to the mobile operator, the landline providers are up in arms over the issue. DoT, MTNL and private basic operator Bharti have said that their share of the call charge should be much more. This demand is based on the logic that as calls will originatefrom a landline, the cost of hosting the call and servicing the network would be higher for the basic service provider.