India’s telecom regulator, Trai today announced domestic interconnection charge tariff reduction by as much as 33 percent which may result in drop in tariffs for domestic calls. The regulator however increased the interconnection charge for international incoming calls from 30 paise at present to 40 paise per minute.

The domestic termination charge will include all types of calls i.e. fixed to fixed, fixed to mobile, mobile to fixed and mobile to mobile with the new termination rates being 20 paise as compared to 30 paise at present.

Trai expects the operators to pass on these benefits to the consumers. Even for international calls, the regulator expects the operators to reduce tariff for outgoing international calls.

Additionally in a bid to give boosts to uptake of telephony services in the rural areas, the regulator retained the ceiling on carriage of domestic long distance calls at 65 paise per minute. Also Trai said that it has not specified the origination charge in order to provide more flexibility to the operators for offering innovative tariff schemes.

Further, the Transit/Carriage charge from Level-II Trunk Automatic Exchange to Short Distance Charging Area(SDCA) will now be 15 paise per minute as against existing charge of 20 paise per minute. Intra SDCA transit charge will now be less than 15 paise per minute from the current figures of 20 paise per minute.

Termination charge for 3G services will be same as that of 2G services.

The development follows two stage consultation process involving all the industry players.

The new tariffs will come into effect from April 1, 2009.