Offers per-second billing, slashes rates

Joining the league of telecom service providers offering per-second billing, state-run MTNL today announced such a plan for its subscribers — both 2G and 3G — at as low as half a paisa per second for making local and STD calls in the same network.The charge would be one paisa a second for making calls outside the network.

Till now, only MTS, the CDMA mobile service of Sistema Shyam, has offered a rate of half a paisa per second for calls on the same network.

Tata DOCOMO was the first company to introduce per-second billing, which was followed by all other operators. Analysts have expressed concern over the profitability of telecom players on the back of this rate war, which has reduced the prices to a new low.

*A prepaid user would have to pay Rs 149 and Rs 45 for availing the per-second plan in MTNL’s Delhi and Mumbai circles, respectively. The existing postpaid users would be charged Rs 149 a month for availing the new plan, while new postpaid users would be charged Rs 500 as activation fee, apart from this monthly fixed charge.

The company is to also offer video calls at one paisa per second for its 3G subscribers.

MTNL and BSNL are the two companies which have launched 3G services on their network so far. MTNL chairman and managing director R S P Sinha said, “We have garnered about 160,000 3G users currently and we are targeting a base of 500,000-600,000 subscribers by March 2010.”

It has also slashed the local SMS rate to 25p per SMS, although the STD SMS rates remain Re 1 per SMS.

On acquisition, Sinha said the company is always on the lookout for new opportunities and is aggressively scouting the African region.