The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has asked all national and international long distance service providers and access providers to apprise it of the current status on readiness of implementation of carrier access code (CAC)/ carrier pre selection. Trai has shot off a letter to all NLDOs, ILDOs, and access providers so that it can decide on the further necessary course of action on the issue.

The authority, on July 24, 2002, had issued direction to access providers and long distance operators regarding the implementation of Call by Call tracking and carrier pre selection. At that time, BSNL did not have capability of call data record (CDR) based billing and hence the department of telecom (DoT) gave a relaxation for the its implementation in BSNL for a period of 12 months.

DoT letter had also stated that this relaxation would stand withdrawn in case the upgraded system is put in place earlier, for level playing field considerations, in line with all others.

After that, high level technical committee with representations from DoT, BSNL, MTNL, ABTO, COAI, C-DOT and TEC held meetings and discussed the cost of setup/upgrade of the network in order to provide the facility of carrier selection.