Right call, wrong timing

In reducing the IUC, Trai could have been more practical

The decision of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to slash the interconnection usage charge (IUC) – for calls terminating on another network – by more than half to 6 paise per minute from October 1 and to abolish it for all local calls from 2020 is an outcome of an extensive academic exercise. The regulator cannot be faulted for following a glide-path of declining IUC, as it has done in the past. The formula modeled on the long-run incremental cost to derive the IUC figure is a global practice, and not by any means arbitrary. The first IUC