Vodafone has, through senior advocate K Vishwanathan, challenged the telecom authority’s new rules which deprive it of charges paid to it by other operators on outgoing calls from their network to the Vodafone network, reported The Indian Express.

In its challenge to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) Telecommunication Interconnection Usage Charges Regulations 2015, at the Delhi high court, Vodafone has argued that the TRAI has arbitrarily decreased Interconnection Usage Charges (IUC), and that this is illegal and beyond the TRAI’s functions.

Interconnection Usage Charge (IUC) is the amount payable by one telecom service provider whose user makes the call to the other whose user receives it. While smaller and newer telecom operators welcomed the move, bigger operators like Vodafone are unhappy with this because they earn through these charges.

The TRAI had notified the regulations in February this year.

A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw refused to give interim relief to Vodafone without hearing TRAI’s reply. The case will be heard next on 19 January 2016.

Vishwanathan reportedly submitted to the court that even when TRAI agrees that costs are incurred for terminating a call, it has grossly erred and acted in an illegal manner while fixing the termination charges for wireline to wireless as zero and wireless to wireless from Rs 0.20 per minute to Rs 0.14 per minute.