OneIndia by Jan '06: Maran

Communications & Information Technology Minister Dayanidhi Maran today said the OneIndia policy, ending the differential call tariffs between domestic long distance and local calls, will be in place by January 2006.

While the minister did not spell out the details, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will be required to finalise the details of the new regime in over the next 52 days. It has already decided to keep the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India away from the tariff rebalancing initiative.

So far, DoT has remained silent on how it plans to address a slew of issues including, reworking the present licensing regime, interconnect agreement, access deficit charges and the revenue share arrangement. These issues need to be addressed before OneIndia can be implemented.

The government will devise a policy to compensate Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd as ADC cannot be levied if local call tariffs are imposed on intra-circle calls.

BSNL, the largest telecom operator has warned that the OneIndia plan will severely affect its revenues.

"The OneIndia concept will benefit customers. Our revenues are certainly going to take a hit. We are yet to analyse the impact. We will come out with the numbers after certain studies," BSNL chairman and managing director AK Sinha had told Business Standard earlier.

Besides, cellular service providers like Hutch and Idea have already reduced tariffs to the proposed OneIndia rates.