Jio + TRAI vs All others

In a rare event, Vodafone CEO sent letters to PM & Telecom minister of India urging them to intervene in TRAI's controversial IUC debate.

New entrant Jio pushing TRAI to drop IUC charges which sparked the controversy. Contrary to Jio's request, every other telecom company pushing TRAI to increase the IUC charges up to 35 paise per minute. 

Note: IUC charges are 14 paise per minute now

Lets see what is IUC charge first.

IUC stands for Interconnection Usage Charges. In early 2000s, there were charges for incoming calls as well. To push mobile phone usage, incoming call rates were dropped. 

To compensate the loss of dropping incoming call charges, TRAI introduced IUC charges. 

Say you are calling your friend's Vodafone number from your Airtel number. Now call originates in Airtel & ends in Vodafone network. So Airtel has to pay 14 paise per minute to vodafone as IUC charges. 

Remember IUC charges are the reason for high charges on calling between different networks compared on calls on same network. Also note, every customer even if he is not recharging for single rupee is generating revenue for the operator by means of IUC

Image source: Google Image Search

NO CALL CHARGES, NO SMS CHARGES, ONLY PAY FOR DATA is the mantra of Jio. So Jio customers were not charged for calls, but remember Jio also pays 14 paise per minute on every call you make to other operators. 

This is costing Jio a lot & quite obvious Jio wants to scrap this IUC. This move worried other players as IUC charges generate huge revenue for them & they are paid for every incoming calls they receive.

Now ball is in TRAI's court as TRAI only can take a decision on this.

Initial news coming like, TRAI favors Jio's idea of scrapping IUC or at least will not change IUC from current price of 14 paise per minute.

Lets have to wait and watch for TRAI's decision

Also read:
You could have read about circuit switching & packet switching in Engineering.

But Do you know Jio operates only on packet switching ? Read more about 
Evolution of mobile networks in India here

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About IamVickyAV

I am Vicky AV, Engineer, Pro Blogger & Twitterati.
I created this blog to post some interesting technical stuff that I feel everyone should know. I hope you find these interesting too. Follow me on Twitter