Forbearance on IUC for SMS to continue, says TRAI

New Delhi, Aug 21 (UNI) Telecom regulator TRAI today said forbearance on Interconnection Usage Charges (IUC) for Short Message Service (SMS) should continue.

As per the prevailing IUC Regulation, termination and Carriage charges for Short Message Service (SMS) has not been specified by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and are forborne.

To address some of the representations from service providers, TRAI had issued a Consultation Paper on the issue of Interconnect Usage Charges for Short Message Service (SMS). The main issues raised in the Consultation Paper were IUC for SMS&Premium rate SMS.

The regulator said that the charges of premium SMS are on the higher side and bear no relationship with the cost and nature of services rendered.

It is hoped that the telecom operators would voluntarily reduce the charges of premium SMS service, and TRAI, henceforth, would closely monitor the trends.

TRAI observed that the subscribers are not fully aware of premium SMS charges. The telecom operators are required to ensure either themselves or in arrangement with the content provider the following: The Telecom Service provider should make necessary agreement/arrangement with the content providers that should include a clause making it mandatory on the part of content provider to widely publicise the tariff applicable for the premium service for better consumer awareness.

The use of short coded SMS numbers should be in accordance with the directives of Department of Telecommunications (DoT) issued from time to time.

TRAI also observed that there is no significant asymmetry in the flow of SMS traffic. The marginal imbalance in SMS traffic perhaps may not call for intervention by the Authority in terms of fixing SMS termination charges in view of the overwhelming arguments in favor of forbearance.

Moreover there is no supplementary cost for the terminating and transiting traffic as primary resource utilized for SMS i.e. the signaling channel (TS-16) is required for handling the signaling for the voice traffic and is used for SMS only in non busy time. The Authority will keep a close watch on the developments and flow of the traffic, and will take suitable action, if required, at any point of time.

UNI RT RA RAI1755