M A I N   N E W S

BSNL, MTNL cut STD tariff
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 7
State-owned telecom giants Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) today joined the tariff war in mobile telephony, with the former slashing STD rates to Rs 4.80 per minute from the existing peak rate of Rs 9 per minute.

According to the new tariffs, which will come into force from midnight tonight, the BSNL will charge at the rate of Rs 4.80 per minute for an STD call covering a distance of more than 500 km made from its cellular network CellOne to any other cellular phone or a fixed line in the country.

For a distance slab between 200 km and 500 km, STD users of CellOne will be charged at the rate of Rs 4.80 per minute during peak hours and Rs 2.40 per minute during off peak hours. For the distance slab of 50 to 200 km, the new tariffs will be Rs 2.40 per minute during peak hours and Rs 1.20 during off-peak hours, while for a distance of less than 50 km users will be charged at a uniform rate of Rs 1.20 for a three-minute call.

Chairman and Managing Director of BSNL Prithipal Singh told newspersons that the new rates would still be cheaper that the Rs 2.99 per minute rate charged by private mobile phone operators as no additional airtime rates were being charged by the BSNL. The private cellular phone operators, which slashed the cell-to-cell STD tariffs last week, charged an additional airtime over and above being charged at the rate of Rs 2.99 per minute.

The MTNL, which provides cellular services in Delhi and Mumbai through its cell network Dolphin, will charge a flat rate of Rs 2.90 per minute, plus air time charges for a distance beyond 50 km, while for a distance of less than 50 km the existing tariff of Rs 1.20 per three minutes remains unchanged.

The MTNL rates are applicable only for cellular-to-cellular calls and not for any fixed line calls, CMD of MTNL Narendra Sharma told newspersons.