SC to hear plea of Vodafone aganist IUC charges today

The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear on Friday a plea of telecom firm Vodafone India against the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai)’s recent tariff regulations, by which inter-connection usage charges (IUC) had been revised.

The structure, notified by Trai on February 23, has slashed by 30 per cent the amount that mobile operators pay to each other for calls made from one network to another. The new measure will come into effect from March 1.

A bench headed by Chief Justice H L Dattu agreed to hear the plea of the private telecom operator after its counsel sought urgent hearing and a stay on the regulations.

It said Trai’s decision be stayed till the pleas, pending before the apex court, are decided.

Under the new tariff regime, a mobile phone operator now needs to pay 14 paise a minute for each call terminating on a rival’s network, compared with 20 paise earlier, Trai has said in its order.

IUC makes up about 20 per cent of the mobile call tariff a user pays.