An NGO called Telecom Watchdog has moved the tribunal TDSAT against the telecom operators over the issue of SMS termination charge which it believes is illegal.

The contention of the NGO is that the operators are doing this illegal activity in a cartelised manner.

“Some of the operators have come before the tribunal (TDSAT) and have challenged this provision, but are not really contesting the issue since it suits their requirement to hike the tariff to the consumer in a uniform/ cartelised manner", it said in a petition.

Termination charges are paid by an operator from whose network calls or SMS originate to the one on whose network these communications end.

Maintaining that the regulator TTRAI needs to do more about this, the NGO said that that SMS termination of 10 paise is imposed arbitrarily on customers through agreements between operators.

The NGO has requested TDSAT to direct TRAI to ask operators not to charge SMS termination charges till a reasonable tariff is fixed.

It said that in a recent tender by BSNL for its GSM network, the cost of SMS system work out to be under $ 0.15 (Rs 8.25) per subscriber.

“This includes hardware, software license, installation and commissioning, testing, spares and on-site warranty after commissioning," the NGO said.

It said that the tribunal should declare the termination charges as exorbitantly high which do not reflect the true cost of providing services.