BSNL slashes call rates by 50%

After reduction of call charges by private players, now India’s largest public telecom company Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has announced to slash the call rates in STD, local and roaming that will be effective from June 11 midnight. The charges have been reduced in both versions: landline and cellular.

The new call rates on the STD charges would now be half of the existing rates on both mobile and landline service. The Landline users would have to pay from today midnight only Rs.1.20 per minute for STD calls on all landline and mobile networks, while for the rural customers it will be only Rs.0.80 per minutes.

The local charges have also been reduced from Rs.1.20 per minutes to Rs. 0.60 per two-minute pulse in all.

In mobile, the STD charges were chopped to Rs.1.20 per minute for the same network and Rs.1.40 for other networks, while the charges on roaming were also sliced. Now the revised charges for all incoming and local outgoing calls during roaming would be Re.1, while the STD outgoing calls in roaming would be Rs.1.50.

Earlier, these were Rs.1.40, Rs.1.75 and Rs.2.40 respectively. These revised charges will be applicable on both pre-paid and post-paid plans.

BSNL’s ‘Super One India Plan’ in which customers can call local and STD in all circles and in all networks in just one rupee has also been revised but in terms of monthly rental. Its monthly rental has been reduced from Rs.799 to Rs.299.

Besides all this, BSNL has also launched a mobile handset of DigiBee, an Indian mobile handset maker with its collaboration. This set of mobile with BSNL’s network would provide cheap services to the customers, as BSNL Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) Kuldeep Goyal said.

“We have chalked out a number of attractive schemes for both post-paid and pre-paid subscribers offering highly competitive rates. We are also offering other schemes to give more value to our subscribers,” said Goyal on the occasion of the launching of the handset.

“This year, we will add 10 lakh new broadband subscribers. And to increase broadband penetration, we are also offering cost-effective personal computers bundling it with various schemes and attractive broadband connectivity options.” Kuldeep added.

Besides, launching the competitive prices of call rates, BSNL is also preparing to reduce the broadband charges to woo more customers. At, present BSNL have 72-million customers comprising 36-million landline and same numbers of mobile users. It has 2-million broadband customers, so far.

BSNL is planning to raise 10-million customers from existing 20 lakh broadband users by 2010, as per BSNL CMD said.

Speaking on the new collaboration, Goyal said that DigiBee’s new handset has a variety of inbuilt features like secret SMS, call blacklist, polyphonic ring tones, built-in games and FM and it is available in the range of Rs.1,000 to 1,600. Moreover, BSNL is providing a free talk value of Rs.1,500 with 15-month validity in this handset.

Earlier, the private mobile players, Bharti Airtel, Reliance, Vodafone and Idea have reduced the call charges from I April, but BSNL did it two months later.

First of all, Airtel had reduced the STD charges to a flat Rs 1.50 for its pre-paid as well as post-paid customers. Then, Reliance Communications' announced to serve unlimited free STD calls for all existing and new Reliance Mobile customers across post-paid, pre-paid and Hello Fixed Wireless Phone customers. Later, Vodafone and then Idea, also slashed their STD call rates to Rs.1.30 per minutes in May.

Asking the question about this delay, BSNL CMD Goyal clarified, “This is not a question of being late, our tariffs will be a trendsetter. Had I cut it earlier, it would not have been beneficial.”

“We will further reduce in prices in future and will add 3-crore new connections in our mobile service within this year,” added Goyal.