Essar Cellphone, the cellular service in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh (East), Haryana, Rajasthan and Punjab, will introduce the country's first on-board cellular service on the Delhi-Amritsar Swarn Shatabdi Express which starts service today.
Company executives said the service would be available on most of the distance between Delhi and Amritsar.
In Punjab, the Essar Cellphone service brand is offered by Evergrowth Telecom, a 100 per cent subsidiary of JT Mobiles.
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The trial run of the train is to be flagged off today from Delhi as part of Independence Day celebrations. The cellular "public call office" on the train will enable travellers to make calls, receive and send faxes and e-mail.
The cellular service will be billed depending on the where the train is and where the call is being made to. Artime charges will be billed at Rs 8.40 per minute along with applicable toll charges and a service charge of Rs 12 per call. On Sundays and national holidays, airtime charge will be Rs 4.20 per minute.
However, call charges will depend on the location of the train at the time the call is made.
For instance, if the train is passing through Jalandhar and a caller wants to call a fixed-line telephone of the department of telecommunications (DoT) or a cellphone user in the district, the call will be treated as a local call and billed at local rates.
On the other hand, if the caller is making a long distance call to anywhere else in Punjab, long distance charges will be levied.
It is expected that even such long distance calls will be priced at a discount to DoT tariff.
Several cellular providers offer long distance calls within the circles they operate at rates cheaper than the department because they have a transmission backbone in place or have leased circuits from DoT for the purpose.
Erich Buerkler, chief executive officer of Essar Cellphone, said, "This unique on-rail mobile PCO service will be beneficial to passengers as they will be able to phone, fax or e-mail anyone, anywhere in India."
Until now, the only mode of communication from select trains like the superfast Rajdhani Express trains has been Inmarsat-based satellite phone systems. An experimental service, the tariffs on these trains are pegged to DoT's long distance charges.
Other cellular service providers may also introduce the service on trains that pass through the states they operate in. Some of the companies are working together to implement such services on trains that pass through several states.