Maran, telcos differ on measures for cheaper calls

The government and the industry are pushing for varying measures for a reduction in mobile phone tariffs.

At a function organised by the GSM Association today, Dayanidhi Maran, Union minister of communication and IT, asked telecom companies to reduce international roaming rates for the benefit of customers. Industry executives present on the occasion did not immediately respond to Maran's call.

On behalf of the telecom industry, Sunil Mittal, chairman and managing director of Bharti Airtel, the country's largest operator in the mobile telephony space, felt that "the services tax and other levies fixed for mobile operators should be reduced by the government." A reduction in levies was likely to lead to lower tariffs.

Maran said the government's recent decision to get the defence services to vacate some spectrum for commercial telecom operators would enhance the quality of coverage.

"The Trai will be able to release the 45 mega hertz (MHz) spectrum space from the defence share for commercial use and this will help address the issues of coverage and capacity in dense areas in the country," he said.

Mittal said, "the additional spectrum will help increase the services and lead to enhanced proliferation." However, he ruled out any decrease in the mobile STD rates between Mumbai and Delhi, as has been done by MTNL.

Craig Ehrlich, GSM Association chairman said, "While it took 12 years for the industry to reach the first billion connections, the second billion have been achieved in just two and a half years, boosted by the phenomenal growth of mobiles in emerging markets like China, India, Africa, Latin America, accounting for 82 per cent of the second billion subscribers".

GSM-based mobile services have seen phenomenal growth in India, where 80 million of the 100 million mobile subscribers use the GSM platform. China is the largest GSM market in the world today with more than 370 million users.

Maran set a target of 500 million GSM subscribers by the end of 2010.