New tariff packages from May 1
State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) have decided to take on private cellular firms by announcing competitive tariff plans.
The new schemes, cleared by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) today, will be available from May 1. Trai also cleared the new plans of Tata Tele.
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Both MTNL and BSNL have tailored their tariff plans to meet the different usage patterns of their subscribers. MTNL has retained a pulse rate of 180 seconds on each of its three plans.
On the other hand, BSNL has kept it unchanged only for calls from one fixed line to another, but halved it for calls from a fixed to a WLL (mobile) phone. For calls from fixed to cellular phones, the pulse rate has been reduced to one minute in metro areas, and to 30 seconds in circles.
Keeping inter-circle long distance tariffs unchanged, BSNL has halved the charges on intra-circle calls beyond 200 km to Rs 2.40 a minute. Also, tariff for inter-circle long distance (beyond 200 km) calls from fixed to cellular phones has been cut by 25 per cent to Rs 3.60 a minute.
BSNL has sharply increased the pulse rate for Internet access during off-peak hours (10.30-6.30 am) to 10 minutes from the current 3 minutes. Users will pay only Rs 7 an hour for Net access during this period. The peak hour pulse rate has, however, been retained at 3 minutes.
MTNL