Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has asked Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd to pay interconnect usage charges to cellular and basic operators every 45 days.

BSNL had wanted a 90-day settlement period, while other operators had wanted the payments to be made after every 30 days.

Trai, on Saturday, also asked BSNL to upgrade its network by March 2004 to meet the requirements of the new IUC regime.

BSNL had indicated it would need 18 months to revamp its network in line with the Trai order, which envisaged revenue sharing between the originator, carrier and terminator of a call.

The implementation of the order ran into trouble after BSNL said it did not have the capability to differentiate between wireless-in-local-loop limited mobility calls and calls from fixed-line users.

In order to resolve the problem, Trai constituted a technical committee to suggest options. However, these did not find favour with all operators.

On Saturday, Trai managed to broker an interim agreement according to which the reconciliation of call data will be made on an off-line basis till March next year.

Industry analysts, however, point out that the controversy over IUC is far from over with operators filing as many as four different cases against the Trai's order in the Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal.

"There are still a large number of anomalies in the IUC order which will not make easy the implementation of the regime from May 1 onwards," said an analyst.

One of the issues that is generating controversy is the drastic increase in tariffs of fixed-line phones under the IUC regime.

Analysts said the IUC regime will make business unviable for owners of public telephone booths.