The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Wednesday proposed switching over to revenue sharing regime for collection of access deficit charge, the money to be paid by operators to BSNL for carrying out rural telephony obligations, a move which could lead to a fall in tariffs, especially from cellphones to fixed-line phones.

TRAI has proposed a range of 2.2 per cent to 5.3 per cent (depending upon monthly rental) of the adjusted gross revenue.

As of now the operators have been paying the ADC component on the basis of each call and this was leading to confusion over calculation of the ADC.

In a consultation paper released on Wednesday, TRAI said the range for the proposed ADC revenue share is 2.2 per cent for those areas where the monthly rental of fixed line telephone is Rs 200, while 5.3 per cent in areas with monthly rental of Rs 156.

While announcing the revised ADC on October 29 last year, TRAI had indicated that the ADC would be phased out over the next 3 to 5 years but in the interim period the regulator had said that the ADC would be applicable only to BSNL and not the private fixed line operators.

"If the ADC regime if based on revenue share, the extent of data requirement for the review is much lower than that required for an ADC based on varying charges per minute," TRAI said in the paper.

TRAI said that based on the assumption about growth of subscriber base for fixed and mobile, capital investment and average revenue per user including revenues from access and long distance services, it would be possible to calculate the percentage revenue share that would fund ADC.

T V Ramachandran, DG, Cellular Association of India, said tariffs for all services both fixed as well as cellular should drop if we move towards a revenue-share based ADC.

"While I do not see much scope for a fall in cell-to-cell local calls, there is likely to be scope for substantial falls in cell-to-cell STD rates and cell-to-fixed line STD tariffs," he said.

"But more than that I believe the move would help in tapping the rural and remote areas for providing telecom services as the current cost of rolling out network is very high," he said.

ADC is paid for terminating all mobile, WLL, NLD and ILD calls on BSNL landlines. BSNL also gets ADC for cell-to-cell calls that bypass its landline network.

Within the country at present, ADC is linked to call distance. Mobile and NLD operators pay ADC at 30 paise per minute for 50 km, 50 paise per minute for 50-200 km and 80 paise per minute over 200 km from terminating calls to landline.

The same rates are applicable to cell-to-cell calls that do not touch BSNL network.

The ADC was earlier at the level of Rs 13,000 crore (Rs 130 billion) and was consequently reduced to the level of Rs 5,000 crore (Rs 50 billion).

TRAI has invited comments from stakeholders by July 15.