Tariffs likely to tumble for customers of private telcos. |
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India today pitched for a sharp cut in access deficit charge, a levy imposed on telephone calls to fund Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd's rural telephony. |
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Trai has called for replacing the ADC on domestic long-distance calls from 30 paise per minute to 1.99 per cent of an operator's annual revenue. |
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For incoming international calls, it wants the ADC to be cut from Rs 3.25 per minute to between Rs 1.20 and Rs 2 per minute and on outgoing calls from Rs 2.50 per minute to 50 paise. There is no ADC on local calls. |
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In the current year, BSNL has got over Rs 5,340 crore (in fact, Rs 8,000 crore due to an accounting error) in ADC. |
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The proposed ADC regime can push collection down to Rs 3,143 crore, of which Rs 1,296 crore will be from incoming international long-distance calls and Rs 267 crore from outgoing international calls. The rest, Rs 1,580 crore, will be contributed by domestic long-distance calls. This will lead to a Rs 2,197-crore dip in revenue for BSNL (not taking volume growth into account). |
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But users, especially those who use private mobile services, will benefit as a cut in tariffs will follow. If telecom operators decide to pass on the benefits of the entire ADC cut to their customers, tariffs can tumble by up to 35 per cent. |
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The benefits may be still higher as Trai is expected to reduce termination and carriage charges on all calls. |
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According to Trai sources, the revised rates were presented to the department of telecom today. But the new regime has not been finalised as the DoT has sought explanations on "some key aspects". This implies that minor changes may be made in the figures that have been proposed by Trai. |
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Trai sources said clarifications on the issues raised by the DoT would be provided by tomorrow, paving the way for the recommendations to be made public by Thursday. |
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This will facilitate the roll-out of OneIndia tariffs by all operators (BSNL and MTNL have already announced Re 1- per-minute calls from March 1). |
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