Telecom rates continue to fall

MTNL offers cheapest cell rental at Rs 49 a month

Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) introduced a new scheme for its post-paid cellular subscribers with a monthly rental of Rs 49, the lowest in the market, and cut short messaging service (SMS) charges on its own network to 25 paise across the board.

The state-owned telecom company also introduced loyalty bonus sche- mes for its pre-paid card subscribers, who will get extra talk time worth Rs 50 on every card of Rs 400 denomination.

It is also offering full talk time on a Rs 250 card. Pre-paid card users also get SMS at 25 paise for all destinations. Post-paid subscribers have to pay 50 paise a message for national and international SMS.

The new post-paid scheme, called Cell Mobile plan, offers outgoing calls at 90 paise a minute and a monthly rental of Rs 49. This beats Airtel's scheme with a monthly rental of Rs 150 and outgoing calls at Rs 1.90 a minute.

The rental for national roaming has been reduced to Rs 30 from Rs 60. Airtel and Hutch have, however, made roaming free.

Bharti recently brought down SMS rates to 40 paise for its subscribers in the western region. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd offers SMS at 60 paise to all its subscribers.

Despite its initial promise, MTNL has failed to gain substantial ground in the Delhi and Mumbai cellular market.

While it was the first to trigger a price war in the mobile sector with steep tariff cuts during its launch, MTNL's rollout plans ran into rough weather with delays in procuring equipment.

The company has managed to garner just over 150,000 subscribers in Delhi and about 160,000 users in Mumbai in two years, even as the private operators have grabbed a major part of the mobile subscriber base.