TRAI issues draft amendment in the Regulations on Port charges

New Delhi, Jan 12 (UNI) Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) today issued a draft amendment regulations on Port charges for comments of stakeholders.

The proposed amendment in these regulations reduces the existing Port charges by about 23 per cent to 29 per cent for various slabs.

TRAI expects that service providers will pass the benefit of reduction in Port charges to the consumers.

With the induction of the competition in the telecom sector in the country, the interconnection among the service providers has become an essential requirement for the development of the sector.

In the multi-operator multi-service scenario, establishment of effective interconnection helps the consumers of one network to communicate with the consumers of another network.

Port is an essential part for the establishment of the interconnection between two networks. It may be defined as a place of termination on a switch/exchange to provide Point of Interconnection (POI) for ingress and egress of traffic between the two interconnecting networks.

The Port charges are payable by the interconnection seeker to the interconnection provider for terminating interconnection links on the network interface of the interconnection provider.

These draft amendment regulations also mandate interconnection seekers to place their demand for the required number of Ports, on every POI on the basis of traffic projection on an annual basis.

This would facilitate the interconnection provider to take timely action to procure the expansion equipment for provisioning of Ports.

This will also help effective and timely interconnection among different networks thereby improving the quality of service to consumers.

UNI