Vodafone Idea has said that Reliance Jio’s decision to levy interconnect usage charge or IUC for outgoing calls to rival networks will not affect its customers and that it doesn’t plan to separately bill its customers for the calls they make outside its own network.

Reliance Jio on Wednesday announced plans to levy a charge of Rs 0.06 per minute as IUC for calls that its customers make to other networks.

“The announcement by one of the telecom service providers today to charge for calls made to other service providers to cover the termination charge of IUC is not only an action of undue haste but it also does not bring out the fact that interconnect is a settlement between operators and not a consumer pricing matter,” Vodafone Idea said in a statement shared with News18.

Vodafone Idea added that any decision on the matter will be taken by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).

“In our view, its TRAI’s call for a consultation on IUC keeping in mind the continuing asymmetry in traffic and in line with its earlier stated position on the matter.”

The statement added: “This announcement comes closely to the action taken recently to potentially hurt revenues of other operators with its recent unilateral action of reducing ringing time.”

The Vodafone Idea statement said that it continues to serve its customers in remote areas of the country despite it being an unprofitable operation.