While the state-owned telecom majors fight it out with TDSAT over cut in access deficit charges (ADC), private players have gone ahead and reduced their STD and ISD tariffs. Bharti-owned Airtel and Hutch on Thursday announced reduced rates for their long distance calls.Airtel cut ISD costs by Rs 1.75 per minute and slashed Rs 0.35 a minute on STD calls, said Bharti Televenture Ltd President (Mobility) Manoj Kohli.The charges, for STD calls from Airtel to non-Airtel mobiles, will be effective 1 Feb, 2005. Bharti claims to have over 10 million mobile customers.Hutch cut its STD tariff by Rs 0.35 per minute and its mobile to mobile ISD tariff by Rs 1.75 per minute. This was announced on Thursday by Harit Nagpal, Chief Marketing Officer of Hutch. The tariff cut will affect more than 7.2 million Orange pre-paid and post-paid users in the country.Among the private players, BPL, Tata Indicom and Reliance are yet to announce a reduction in tariff.Bharti and Hutch have lowered their rates following the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s new ADC regime, which lowered payments to telecom PSU BSNL. BSNL had said on Wednesday that it could revise prices as lower ADC revenues would make its rural telecom efforts less viable.
