DoT and the Association of Basic Telecom Operators (ABTO) have said that any move to give paging operators a share of the call charge would adversely affect their revenues.

DoT and private operators, like Bharti Telenet and Hughes Ispat, have moved the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). While the IPSA has demanded that call charges must be shared equally in order to ensure long-term financial viability of operators, both DoT and ABTO said that such a revenue share mechanism is not feasible.

"We are not in favour of sharing the Rs 1.20 per call charge with the paging provider," said ABTO secretary general SC Khanna. However, basic service providers are willing to share the revenue if the charges are hiked for PSTN calls made to a pager.

Earlier, TRAI hadrecommended a charge of Rs 1.60 (Rs 1.40 call charge plus 20 paise additional premium for call to pager), a suggestion rejected by the IPSA. PN Uppal, secretary general, IPSA, said paging providers are not in favour of the premium call scheme as it would affect market growth of the sector. Operators have demanded an equal share of 60 paise per call from the PSTN call charge of Rs 1.20, a demand opposed by DoT and ABTO.

DoT has also ruled out differentiating calls made to pagers, on the grounds that such monitoring is not technically feasible and difficult to monitor as the software for it is not available at the moment. Operators have also not favoured the imposition of premium on calls made to a pager as it would adversely impact the number of paging calls and growth of the paging subscriber base.

Replying to TRAI's consultative paper on viability assessment for radio paging service providers, IPSA has said that in view of this, incoming paging calls should be charged at par with a normal call.

On theissue of licence fee, the IPSA is in favour of abolition of the license fee regime for paging services on the grounds that paging is a one-way data communication, lacking voice transmission capability.

However, DoT has said that licence fee should be charged in the future based on the fee quantum for the first three years as the licence were awarded on the basis of H1 quote.

DoT has opined that despite viability considerations, it is necessary that with the growth of service the license fee level should at least be maintained, if not increased. The department has said that inefficient operations should not be made a factor affecting license fee revenues.

IPSA maintains that future arrangement on license payment does not have to be at the levels of license fee quantum comparable to the levy during first three years of operation. The city paging license fee agreement stipulates that license fee would be fixed for only the first three years and refixed on the basis of a review of this period for thesubsequent 4th to 10th year period.

Paging operators contend that as internet service providers are not charged license fee, the same principle should apply to paging service providers. Citing the example of other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, operators have said that WPC charges of three per cent, levied at present, should be considered as a part of revenue for the government.