Cellular operators are firing their first salvo to take on the rock bottom prices offered by wireless in local loop players to customers.

Cellular operators are working behind close doors to finalise modalities to announce cheaper "home zone tariffs" to take on the might of WLL operators such as Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservices.

Under the scheme being worked out, operators will offer a cheaper tariff to customers when they call up or receive calls within their office and their home zones.

However, calls made or received outside the zone have to be paid the normal rates. Calls within the home zone could be at least 50 per cent cheaper than the normal airtime which customers pay now.

Various such home zones are expected to be earmarked by cellular companies were special tariffs would be offered. These could include dividing the city in zones such as south, north, east and west. Calls made within any of the zones again would be at rates which will match or could be even lower than WLL limited mobile rates.

Operators are also working on a dual tariff scheme in circles. Currently, mobile service customers pay only local call charges for calls from cell-to-cell that they make between cities or talukas within a State. But now the two rates will be separate.

Customers will be offered tariffs for calls made within the city at lower rates. But calls made between two cities will be charged at a higher rate (but will be cheaper than what is offered by WLL mobile operators who have to charge standard trunk dialing rates).

Cellular operators say that tariffs within the city are expected to be at a premium of around 10 per cent to that of WLL players. That is because they offer value-added services such as short message service which is not available on WLL phones.

Explaining the logic of home zone tariffs a mobile operator points out: "This is the most effective way to take on WLL players. Customers can now compare apples with apples and look at prices of comparable services".

Cellular operators say that calls within a city or a taluka constitute for over 75 per cent of all the calls made.

They believe that the new home zone tariffs, apart from further segmenting the market, will be enough to make it unattractive for customers to switch to WLL limited mobility services.