BSNL has expressed its concern over the government decision to make mobile calls between three metro capitals and the rest of the states as well as UP (East) and West as local, but hoped to make up for the shortfall by upsurge in traffic."The decision will certainly have an impact in terms of revenue on BSNL. But we hope there is also spurt in traffic which would outdo the shortage in the revenue," A K Sinha, CMD, BSNL said.Sinha, however, did not specify the amount of loss BSNL would have to bear due to direct connectivity saying it would take another 15 days to estimate the exact loss."But we have to bear it for a reason which is more consumer-friendly", Sinha said adding this was being done by many operators earlier and the government decision had just rationalised it.BSNL's loss comes in the form of access deficit charge (ADC) loss paid by operators to the PSU apart from loss in STD traffic.Government last week said that calls between Chennai and rest of the Tamil Nadu and like wise between Mumbai and Maharashtra, Kolkata and West Bengal, and whole of Uttar Pradesh would be treated as local calls saving roaming and long distance call charges.Till now the three metros -- Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai and their respective rest of the states of Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Maharashtra were treated as two separate telecom circles. Similarly the consumers in UP (East) and UP (West) would be able to connect as local calls now.New policy comes in to effect from May 25 where calls from mobile-to-mobile and fixed-to-mobile will now become local. The inter-service area connectivity will only be for terminating traffic.
