Bharti Airtel, planning to offer services by end December, says it is concerned about existing mobile operators being anti competitive. "The mobile operators are not providing interconnection to Airtel on the same terms as they practice amongst themselves", Sanjay Kapoor, President Mobile Services at Airtel told The Sunday Times FT in an interview on Friday.

Interconnect is a set of legal rules, technical and operational arrangements between network operators that enable customers on one network to communicate with customers of another network. "When Airtel requested the other operators to provide an interconnection with their networks, the operators wanted us to pay for this interconnection at Rs. 1.50 per minute whereas they themselves were practicing a free call system amongst themselves," Mr. Kapoor said.

He said this was somewhere in July and on the request of Airtel, Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (TRC) agreed to intervene and appoint a consultant to arrive at a fair and consumer friendly interconnecting rate.