Reliance Infocomm may sign pact with postal department

Reliance Infocomm is close to signing a deal with the postal department in a few days for using the post offices as bill collection centres....

Reliance Infocomm is close to signing a deal with the postal department in a few days for using the post offices as bill collection centres. Some finer details are being thrashed out now, informed sources. The Reliance spokesperson declined to comment. With this deal, subscribers of the company’s wireless in local loop — mobile service can deposit their bills at any of the post office counters. For collecting each bill, the postal department would be charging Rs 5 to Reliance.

With 1,55,295 post offices spread across the country, the post offices come across as a ready distribution network for various service providers.

Reliance Infocomm which announced the commercial launch of its services in December last year was expected to make the services commercially available from May 1. The company is still awaiting the approval of its tariffs from Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). Reliance Infocomm’s limited mobility service — branded Reliance IndiaMobile — offers free incoming calls and a tariff of 40 paise from one Reliance connection to another in addition to SMS. Other private telecom players eyeing the vast distribution network of department of posts to use the post offices as bill collection centres as well as point of sales for their pre-paid cards are Bharti, Hutchison which have submitted proposals to the postal department, informed sources. Earlier, the post offices acted as bill collection centres for BSNL — since they were under the same ministry. Since November 2002, the postal department was allowed to offer its distribution network to private players as well.

Since then, Hutchison has been using the post offices as distribution and bill collection centres in its Kolkata circle. Other private players using the post office network include Spice in Karnataka, Oasis in Rajasthan.