NEW DELHI: The country's youngest mobile operator Reliance Jio Infocomm locked horns with incumbent telcos over interconnect usage charge ( IUC ) yet again at a meeting with the regulator on Tuesday.While Bharti AirtelBSE -0.09 %, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular suggested nearly doubling IUC – what a service provider pays another to link a call to the latter’s network – from the present 14 paise per minute to cover their costs, Jio wants it to be scrapped altogether.Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ( Trai ), which held a daylong workshop on Tuesday, said it would soon give its recommendations on IUC after having issued the consultation paper nearly a year ago.The issue has previously led to huge acrimony among carriers. Incumbent telcos stand to lose the maximum revenue if IUC is scrapped, as they have the most number of subscribers and garner a major share of termination charges as most calls end on their networks. At the same time, if IUC is raised, Jio would be on the losing side as it would have to pay more to the three telcos.“Today all major operators participated. Some operators were of the view that we should go to bill and keep, other asked for reducing it, some said keep it constant at current level.Some others said that it should be increased,” Trai chairman RS Sharma said after meeting with executives of telecom operators.When asked whether telcos had asked for IUC to be increased to 30-35 paise, Sharma confirmed it but did not name any specific carrier.“IUC is paid to operator who handles the call. Essentially the philosophy is that it should cover the cost. How do you compute the cost of handling it is the issue, as the cost is a function of multiple parameters, elements…everyone had their own grounds to make their arguments,” Sharma said.An open house discussion on July 20 will follow Tuesday’s workshop, after which the regulator is expected to give its recommendations.It would, however, not wait for the recommendations of the inter-ministerial group (IMG) looking into the financial stress in the sector, even though the issue of IUC was raised by the telcos at a meeting with the IMG last month.Separately on Tuesday, telecom minister Manoj Sinha met with finance minister Arun Jaitley to discuss the issue of financial stress in the telecom industry caused by high debt of nearly Rs 5 lakh crore in the sector – pegged at Rs 7.29 lakh crore by banks. Trai on Tuesday said telcos brought out various models of computing IUC including fully allocated cost, long run incremental cost (LRIC) and LRIC+, while debating the issue in the workshop.