MTNL joins price war, cuts local, STD rates

Local calls from landline to mobile phones will be cheaper for Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) subscribers in Delhi and Mumbai from October 2 this year.

MTNL, on Wednesday, announced it would increase the pulse rate for these calls to 90 seconds from 60 seconds at present.

The state-owned telecom service provider announced a 50-57 per cent reduction in tariffs for its mobile and fixed-line subscribers.

It also announced a single STD rate of Rs 2.40 a minute, irrespective of distance, for both fixed and mobile subscribers for calls to any network in the country.

Call charges for pre-paid subscribers has been reduced 28-57 per cent. Pre-paid subscribers will have to pay 90 paise a minute for calls to the company's own Global System for Mobile (GSM) network, compared to Rs 2.10 at present.

Local calls to other GSM networks and to fixed and wireless-in-local-loop (WLL) networks, however, will be charged at Rs 1.50 a minute.

Post-paid subscribers of MTNL will have to pay 80 paise a minute for local calls to the company's own mobile network and Rs 1.20 a minute for calls to other cellular networks and fixed and WLL lines phones with a monthly rental of only Rs 100.

MTNL,which has a capacity of 2,25,000 GSM lines each in Delhi and Mumbai, is expanding its capacity by 4,00,000 lines each in the two metros.

"The new capacity is likely to be commissioned on October 2. We will be able to meet the enhanced demand with the increased capacity," a senior MTNL official said.

"The new network will have features of GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) for high speed data transmission and subsequently made EDGE (Enhanced Data Rate for GSM Evolution) enabled," the company release said.

MTNL will also increase the number of base transmission stations to provide better coverage and speech quality.

The new network will offer various value-added services like multi-media messaging, colour logos and polyphonic ring tones.

Mobile telephony charges in the country have been heading south after a series of price cuts by leading carriers to lure new customers.

New rates

• For a mobile-to-mobile call on its own network, pre-paid users will have to pay 90 paise/min and post-paid users 80 paise/min
  
• Local calls to other GSM, fixed-line and wireless networks will cost Rs 1.20/min for post-paid users and Rs 1.50/min for pre-paid users
  
• STD charges have been lowered to a flat rate of Rs 2.40 a minute, irrespective of distance and network