BSNL cooks up single-call charges

State-owned BSNL, the last operator to introduce tariffs to match the government8217;s vision of 8216;OneIndia8217;, will announce its un...

State-owned BSNL, the last operator to introduce tariffs to match the government8217;s vision of 8216;OneIndia8217;, will announce its uniform all-India phone tariffs on Monday.

The BSNL board was in a huddle all Saturday, trying to come up with a plan that lowers long-distance calling rates to Re 1 without hurting landline users. Any formula BSNL comes up with is likely to raise phone rentals, as it has for private operators.

Sources also said that the BSNL plan is to rejig the pulse rate. At present the rural calls have a pulse rate of 180 seconds which may be reduced to 60 or 80 seconds to make the Re 1 call charge sustainable.

Private telecom operators such as Hutch, Reliance, Tata and Bharti beat BSNL to the job over November and December, with cuts that have reduced call charges to Re 1 or below at least within networks.

This leaves the PSU with one prerequisite8212;that it should cut long distance call charges to Re 1, BSNL sources said. Besides, if the government allows Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Trai to rejig the present Access Deficit Charges ADC regime, BSNL8217;s fall will be heavily cushioned.

ADC compensates BSNL for the subsidy it offers to landline phone connections in rural areas. BSNL provides 99 per cent of all rural phones and gets roughly Rs 5,000 crore as ADC from private operators every year.

A private sector movement has gathered around the method of calculating this charge 8212; as a fixed levy on every call. Operators want the government to collect ADC on a revenue-share basis.

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They believe that once subscriber numbers skyrocket, as they are expected to under OneIndia, a per-call levy will give BSNL far higher ADC proceeds than it needs for rural landlines.

The finer details of OneIndia are being worked out by the BSNL board, and approval for the re-worked tariffs will be sought from the Department of Telecom DoT over the weekend.