access charges; whereas in the Petition under consideration, the calls are carried by NLD/ILD operator into the petitioner's network and it is one-way billing. We therefore feel that this Petition is very much in order. It is a different matter that all these service providers including NLD/ILD operators were covered by the circular issued by BSNL wherein it incorporated the MCU billing but our judgment covered only the petitioners where in that memo of parties in Petition No. 48 of 2004, the present petitioner as NLD/ILD licensee was not a party. Therefore the principle of res judicata is not violated in this case and the Petition is maintainable. The respondents have entered into agreement with the petitioner for billing on per second aggregated into minutes basis but changed the same subsequently by issuing circulars unilaterally. According to the petitioner, the reasons for such a change were not communicated to the petitioner. It was submitted by the respondent that it had taken approval from the TRAI before issuing such a circular. We were shown the approval given by TRAI to implement the IUC regulation and charges proposed in the circulars now being impugned and questioned. The circulars were issued after both the regulations, i.e., January 2003 and October 2003. The respondents during the arguments relied heavily on judgment in case of Petition No. 48 of 2004 from where Mr. Maninder Singh, the learned counsel quoted various reasons for nonavailability/delay in implementation of CDR, lack of technological capability and requirement of large number of trunk groups to be created to meet the IUC Regulation. We were made aware of these facts which are contained in the order in Petition No. 48 of 2004. In those cases also billing was done on MCU basis rather than on aggregated per minute basis. While taking the approval of TRAI, the respondent had communicated its constraints, particularly to MCU billing requirement of large number of additional trunk groups, which it could ill afford. While giving approval for MCU billing, TRAI had taken this into account.
