Reliance slashes prepaid tariffs in Chennai

To capture a bigger share of pre-paid mobile phone services market, Reliance Infocomm has slashed its tariffs for the segment by 40 to 60 per cent in the Tamil Nadu and Chennai circles.

This is a departure from the company's initial move to go with a pan-India tariff plan for its pre-paid subscriptions.

Called `advantage 99' the new tariff plan offers local calls within the Reliance network at 99 paise per minute, as compared to Rs 2.49 it offer in the existing package across the country. Calls to Reliance phones in the other circles will now cost the Tamil Nadu subscriber Rs 1.79 (Rs. 2.99) per minute.

Local calls to other networks (be it a landline or mobile services in the GSM or CDMA segments) will be charged Rs 1.79 (Rs 2.49/Rs 2.99) per minute. Inter-circle calls to other networks can be made at Rs 2.49 (Rs 2.99 / Rs 3.99) per minute.

"We have started customising our tariff plans to the individual circles," S P Sukla, president, wireless products and services, Reliance Infocomm, said at the launch of the new tariff plan here on Wednesday.

V G Somasekhar, head, RIM Business, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, explained: "We see the pre-paid is the fastest growing segment and we need to tap that."

Sukla added that Reliance will review the tariff plan in its other circles in the coming months, though he refused to divulge how the tariff plan will be structured in those places.