Mumbai-Delhi MTNL traffic jumps four-fold

Mahanagar Telecom Nigam Ltd (MTNL) has seen a four-fold increase in call minutes between Delhi and Mumbai just two months after the company offered subscribers local rates for calls between the two metros.

"In April 2006, our volume of calls per month from Delhi to Mumbai was 25-26 lakh minutes. It has grown to 90 lakh minutes per month," said R S P Sinha, chairman and managing director, MTNL.

Buoyed by the success, MTNL is contemplating offering local call rates across MTNL services "� between its landline and wireless subscribers.

He also pointed out that a similar trend in increase of usage was seen between Mumbai and Delhi, though figures were only being tabulated. The public sector telecom major has over 2.2 million fixed line subscribers in Mumbai and 1.6 million in Delhi.

Sinha said the drastic drop in carriage costs had helped the company pass on the benefit to the customers. "The cost of our carriage charges has gone down from Rs 21 crore to Rs 10 crore," he said.

This is because calls are being carried on their own by using bandwidth from Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd on a rental basis.

For its national long distance routing, Sinha said it had received bids as low as 41 paise from a couple of operators but would prefer Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.

The operator expects the churn-out rate of its subscribers, which was about a lakh last year, will significantly drop with the new measures. It is looking at 20-25 per cent growth in its subscriber base this year. It has a subscriber base of 6 million at present.

Subscribers can call between Delhi and Mumbai by either dialling the normal STD codes, or by using the prefix 9511 or 9522 if they do not have an STD connection.

However, despite the increase in call volumes, the company's average revenue per user of around Rs 800 for its landline subscribers is expected to remain stable because of the tariff fall, Sinha said.