Airtel has announced the launch of the PCO service in Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation's 4,000 buses plying on long distance and medium long distance routes across Maharashtra by May 2007.

The revenue, which will come through the billing of recharge vouchers, will be shared in the ratio of 75 : 25 by Airtel and MSRTC respectively.

Airtel has tied up with the MSRTC to commence PCO facility in MSRTC's buses across Maharashtra for two years.

Accordingly, the service will be commenced in around 4,000 MSRTC buses plying on long distance and medium long distance routes in 218 towns and 30 cities, including Nashik, Pune, Mumbai, Nagpur, Aurangabad and Amravati.

So far, PCOs have been installed on 1,000 MSRTC buses, while the PCOs will be installed in rest of the buses (3,000) by May 2007. This facility will be extended to other buses on other routes if this service gets a good response from the passengers, the company sources said.

Airtel and MSRTC will share the revenue which will come through the billing of recharge vouchers, in the ratio of 75:25, respectively. The Airtel PCO is a GSM-based phone and will work on pre-paid platform.

MSRTC will be responsible for the cash management for the PCO operation in their buses, while Airtel will be responsible for the maintenance cost of the PCOs, sources said.

MSRTC bus commuters in Maharashtra can make local and STD calls while on the move at just Re 1. The local calls will be charged at Re 1 for 60 seconds and STD calls at Re 1 per 20 seconds.

"The Airtel MSRTC PCO service alliance is a logical step to ride over Airtel's superior network width in the state and testifies our commitment to offer customer-centric services to the people in Maharashtra," sources said.

With this alliance, about 17 lakh MSRTC bus commuters can avail of the Airtel PCO service in a day," sources said.

Presently over 1,000 PCOs have been installed in MSRTC buses. The installations would be completed by the end of May '07.

The PCO installations would be undertaken across 248 MSRTC bus depots spread over six regions that would cover 30 major cities including Pune, Mumbai, Nashik, Amravati, Aurangabad and Nagpur, and close to 218 towns in Maharashtra.