Single phone rates need groundwork

It will take a while before telephone subscribers enjoy uniform call rates across the country. The government's OneIndia Plan, which proposes to bring about uniform tariffs regardless of distance, will not be part of the National Telecom Policy 2005.

A slew of issues, including reworking the present licensing and access deficit regimes, will have to addressed before the policy can be implemented, sources in the department of telecommunications (DoT) said today.

"This will be a slow procedure as a host of issues remains to be sorted out. There is no particular time frame for its implementation," a ministry official told Business Standard.

"The government may soon seek comments from all stakeholders for its OneIndia Plan. The government will study the implications and views submitted by the industry before issuing any policy guidelines," the official added.

Communications and Information Technology Minister Dayanidhi Maran told reporters yesterday that the government would soon do away with the distinction between STD and local calls.

"The UPA government will make sure that soon we will have uniform call rates within the country. We will have OneIndia policy, where calls within the country will be treated like calls within a state," Maran had said.

In the first step towards uniform call rates, the government, in May, had addressed the disparity in inter-state telephone tariffs. The DoT had announced that calls between Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai and Maharashtra, and between UP (East) and UP (West), would be treated as local.

Officials of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said the government was yet to approach Trai for its recommendations, but added that the regulator would take up the issue of uniform rates, only if instructed by the government.

"Currently, only national long-distance operators can carry inter-circle calls. These licences must be reworked before uniform call rates can be implemented. Also, not all operators have national licenses. Operators will also have to rework their interconnection agreements, before the country can move towards uniform rates," said an executive with a leading cellular operator.

As the access deficit charge was not being imposed on local calls, the government would have to devise a new policy to compensate BSNL, he added.