BSNL wants more fee for unviable village telephony

With the telecom sector slated to move into a new regime of revenue share-based access deficit charge (ADC), Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited has said revenue share should be set at between 7-8 per cent, in order to sustain its rural obligations.

On the other hand, sources said the department of telecommunications (DoT) had suggested that private operators pay three per cent of their total revenues as ADC under the new regime which is expected to be in place before the month-end.

This is also the view of private operators, who say revenue share must be set at between 3-4 per cent of their total revenue to maintain a level playing field.

The ADC is a levy paid by mobile phone users on national long-distance calls to support the BSNL's unviable rural operations. Under the present system, BSNL gets about Rs 5,000 crore annually in ADC.

According to sources, BSNL had announced its OneIndia plan of uniform tariffs taking into consideration that the ADC collected annually would be retained at the present level. However, if the revenue share is set at 3 per cent, the PSU says the quantum of ADC may come down by Rs 1,200 crore from the current level.

The DoT has already sent a written communication to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to put the new regime in place at the earliest.

The new regime will also revise the termination and carriage charges on long distance calls. This is because, at present, STD calls draw 30 paise as ADC, between 50 to 110 paise as carriage charge (based on the distance) and 30 paise as termination charge, all on a per minute basis, making it unsustainable to offer long distance at Re 1.

Sources also added that Trai was likely to bring out a 3- 4 per cent revenue-based ADC for national long-distance, while retaining the per minute system for international calls, to ensure that there was no dip in the total amount collected.