NEW DELHI: State-owned telco Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited ( BSNL ) said that regulator’s Interconnection Usage Charge ( IUC ) rate cut of 8 paise a minute would help the service provider to offer more aggressive and competitive plans.The sector watchdog Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ( Trai ) Tuesday recommended a drop of IUC or Mobile Termination Charge ( MTC ) to 6 paisa from the existing 14 paisa per minute, and ​said it would be zero from 2020.“IUC coming down will open a new market environment. We’ll be coming up with more aggressive tariff plans for our mobile subscribers,” BSNL chairman Anupam Shrivastava told ETTelecom.The state-driven telco that has a consumer base of 10.5 crore, is IUC gainer by nearly Rs 300 crore annually, and the recent rate cut will bring BSNL’s termination charge income down to Rs 140 crore.“We are concerned about what the IUC would be while launching new plans. Now, we can strategise tariff engineering in such a way to take advantage of new regime,” the top executive said.Shrivastava said that operators' strategies lies in how quickly they could be able to adopt to new IUC system, and especially in a scenario when IUC ​was going to be ​zero.Despite being a government-run company, he said that BSNL has become nimble and reacted to market forces and have come up with disruptive packages such as free roaming in the recent past.Private telcos are, however, yet to re-​tune their business strategies in the wake of reduced termination charges.With Trai lowering IUC by almost 57%, incumbents such as market leader Bharti Airtel , UK-based Vodafone India and Aditya Birla group’s Idea Cellular , seeking higher IUC rate, are now planning a legal battle against sector regulator.Sunil Mittal-driven Bharti Airtel said that it was it was extremely disappointed with Trai’s IUC recommendation which has been derived in a completely ‘non-transparent’ fashion, favoring a new player Reliance Jio .Market leader Bharti Airtel alone earned close to Rs 500 crore from Jio in a quarter ended June 2017, according to a credit ratings agency.Billionaire Mukesh Ambani-owned Jio that has launched commercial 4G-LTE services last September was demanding IUC charge to be dropped or put to zero since it has to pay a significant amount to rival networks where its voice traffic terminates.The reduction in IUC will result in a transfer of $500 million to 600 million (or around Rs 35,000 crore) every year from top telcos such Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular to Ambani-controlled Jio, Fitch Ratings in a statement Wednesday said.India’s second-largest service provider Vodafone said that this ( lower IUC ) is yet another retrograde regulatory measure that would ‘significantly benefit the new entrant alone’ while adversely affecting the rest of the industry Brokerage firm Philip Capital in a note said that the IUC rate cut could impact Bharti Airtel by Rs 1400 crore which is a 4% hit on consolidated EBIDTA, and Idea Cellular would have a 10% dent on its EBIDTA to nearly Rs 900 crore in FY 2018.