Over 13 months have passed since Trai issued a consultation paper to review Interconnect Usage Charges (IUC). The consultation was over long ago. Going by the past precedents, Trai should have issued the order by February 2017 which should have been made effective from April 1, 2017. The core issue of this paper was about Mobile Termination Chares (MTC), which should have been phased out long ago (Apr-2014). But it is continued to be charged at 14 paisa per minute. The mobile operators are recovering this hidden charge from their consumers and pay to their fellow mobile operators who receive the call. In this give and take situation, the consumers suffer with high bills.

Every paisa brings in a lot of money for the operators. Bharti Airtel has stated, “1 paisa upside adds $200 mn to top line”. If we multiply that with 14 paisa of MTC, it comes out to be Rs 17,884 crore a year for Bharti Airtel alone. That tells how much all these operators are fleecing the consumers.

During an argument on August 31, 2017, Tushar Mehta, Additional Solicitor General of India, representing Trai’s case against Vodafone before the High Court, had stated that “MTC is Rs 200 crore gain per day to the private telecom companies”. On this, the justice Vibhu Bakhru asked Trai “who has stopped you (Trai)” from taking a decision. Vodafone’s plea to stay Trai’s proceedings for IUC review was finally dismissed.

It is not that the operators will suffer if MTC is scrapped. Even at 97 per cent lower tariff for data, their profits have gone up. For example, annual data revenue of Airtel has grown from $1.2 billion to $2 billion in FY17. Its “War on Waste” strategy has shown substantial reduction in opex – from 4.7 per cent in 2015 to (-)3.8 per cent in 2017. As a result of which its EBITDA has grown to 37.3 per cent in 2017 from 35.4 per cent in 2016.

With these figures in hand, Trai should not delay scrapping MTC even for a day.