ICH Policy to be Reviewed by December 31st: Chairman PTA

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ICH Policy, under which all international traffic is terminated through PTCL and revenues are shared by 14 LDI operators based on their pre-ICH market share, is to be re-visited by IT Ministry by December 31st, 2013, said Dr. Ismail Shah, Chairman Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.
As per a directive from PTA that was based on ICH Policy, the authority had asked all LDI operators to not to terminate international incoming traffic on their networks. Instead, PTCL was authorized to bring Pakistan’s international incoming traffic on behalf of all operators.
Moreover, ASR and APC rates were also revised with the implementation of ICH.
The new international termination rate set by the PTA was $0.088 per minute, an increase of approximately four hundred percent over the competitive market rate of approximately $0.02 per minute that existed prior to the ICH agreement.

Rates were changed as following:

	Before ICH	After ICH
AAR	12.5 cents / minute	17.6 cents / minute
ASR	6.25 cents / minute	8.8 cents / minute
LDI’s Share	5.0 cents / minute	5.9 cents / minute
APC	1.25 cents / minute	2.9 cents / minute

To further understand AAR, ASR and other terms used in above table, read our this coverage.
Dr. Ismail Shah in a TV show on Dunya TV yesterday said that IT Ministry going to thoroughly analyse the ICH policy and ASR rates.
He said that after proper analysis, IT Ministry might revise ASR and APC or may reverse whole ICH as a policy altogether after December 31st, 2013.