Section 97 in Telecommunication Interconnection Regulations, 2018
97. In response to the afore-mentioned question, the stakeholders have expressed a wide variety of views. While some stakeholders have opined that there is no need for regulatory prescription on the subject because such issues can be resolved through mutual agreement, a few others have argued that it cannot be envisaged as to how and why a requesting service provider would place an inflated demand to the interconnection provider; in case the actual traffic turns out to be less than demand, the extra ports can be de-provisioned by both the interconnecting TSPs on mutual basis. Most other stakeholders have responded with suggestions to ensure that inflated demand for ports is not made by a TSP. Various views expressed by such stakeholders are summarized below:
(a)View-1: Augmentation should be based on current capacity utilization of more than 70% during network busy hour (NBH) consistently for last one week. The quantum of augmentation should be reasonable increase which should bring utilization in between the range of 50 to 70%.(b)View-2: Some interconnection seekers tend to project inflated demands due to their ambitious traffic projections. Catering to such inflated demands would be a costly affair, and might also lead to the creation of superfluous capacities at the port, radio and switch level as well as other wasteful investments. Therefore, it should be the responsibility of the interconnection seeker to justify the demand from a technical and commercial standpoint for the ports and it should be up to the provider to agree to the calculations given by the interconnection seeker.(c)View-3: To ensure that inflated demand for ports is not made by the requesting TSP, the Port Charges should be abolished. In case even after three months, average busy hour utilization of initial POI is below 10% continuously for a month, the Port Charges, as prescribed by TRAI, should be applicable on the interconnection seeker for a period of six months. In case, even after expiry of six months' period from the last POI augmentation, the average busy hour utilisation of POI remains below 30% for a month, then the TSP may withdraw such augmented port capacity.
