Section 36 in Telecommunication Interconnection Regulations, 2018
36. It has been observed that, in any interconnection arrangement, the interconnecting service provider who benefits more from the interconnection assumes the role of interconnection seeker. For instance, when the Government granted Licenses to private players for offering cellular telephony in India, the basic service operators viz. Department of Telecommunications (now BSNL) and MTNL were the incumbents in the sector. At that time, the cellular service providers were to benefit more from interconnection with the basic service operators as the cellular service providers were starting from the scratch and the basic service providers had a reasonably large subscriber base. This was one of the reasons for the cellular service providers' taking the role of interconnection seeker vis-a-vis the basic service operators.
