The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Tuesday revised port charges. According to new amendment the ceiling rates would be Rs 10,000 a year for fixed line telephone calls and at Rs 4,000 for mobile services.

At present, operators pay over Rs 39,000 to each other. Port is an essential part for the establishment of the interconnection between two networks. Port 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.

The port charges were initially determined by TRAI in 1999 and modified by issuing ‘The Telecommunication Interconnection (Port Charges) Regulation 2001’ in December 2001. These charges were subsequently revised in February, 2007. To further review port charges, TRAI issued a consultation paper on 09.05.2012.

The revised Port Charges will come into effect from 1st October, 2012.