The long-distance bills of cellphone users could crash to as low as Rs 50-75 a month plus airtime if an alliance the cellular telecom companies are trying to cobble together takes shape.
"The main attraction of the Reliance Infocomm (which is offering limited mobility services) package is the 40 paisa a minute long-distance tariff. We are working out the modalities with long-distance operators to offer cheap 'bucket' minutes to our customers to stop them from shifting to Reliance," a source in the cellular telecom segment told Business Standard.
To this end, the cellular telecom companies have several plans lined up, one of which envisages charging a flat Rs 50-75 a month for a stipulated number of airtime minutes of long-distance calls between cellular phones. Over this, the calls will be charged at the normal rate.
Another plan is to offer long-distance calls at a small premium to the Reliance tariff.
In both cases, airtime charges will be separate and the offers will be limited to a set number of minutes. The Reliance 40 paisa a minute rate is for the first 400 minutes a month.
The cellular telecom companies met on Sunday to discuss whether these services should be offered to moderate to heavy users or to all subscribers.
The companies are also pushing long-distance operators to halve the current rate of Rs 4.80 a minute after March 31.
The average cellphone user talks 220 minutes a month. Of this, 15-20 per cent are calls to or from other cellphones.
The average airtime for cellular-to-cellular long-distance calls is around 10 minutes a month.
There are doubts whether long-distance telecom operators will agree to the proposal. But the new long-distance telecom companies like Bharti have nothing to lose by reducing tariffs.
Unlike Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, which has 40 million customers, they do not have significant long-distance business. Any drop in tariffs is therefore not seen hurting their bottom lines.
These new companies have built large capacities to carry calls. But airtime is perishable, if not used it goes waste. As private long-distance companies are dependent on business from cellular service providers, any expansion of the subscriber base through lower tariffs will benefit the former.
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