Short-Distance Std To Cost Less
The department of telecommunications (DoT) yesterday reduced telecom tariffs for short distance STD (subscriber trunk dialling) calls by treating them on par with the local calls with immediate effect. This will apply to over 2,000 short-distance charging areas (parts of districts) in the country.
According to a government press release, calls to adjacent SDCAs which were charged on STD rates would now get the facility of inter-dialing on the basic pulse rate of three minutes a call. The calls were earlier billed at STD charges, the pulse of which varied according to distance.
The organisational structure of DoT is based on 21 circles, mostly analogous to states. The circles are further broken into over 360 secondary switching areas (SSAs) or long distance charging areas (LDCAs, which are stand-alone revenue districts or groups of them). The SSAs, in turn, comprise SDCAs.
Already DoT has adopted the concept of "group dialling" which allows adjoining cities or towns to dial on a local call charge basis. For instance, such a facility exists between Delhi and adjoining Gurgaon or Faridabad. While making the calls on DoT's network to adjacent charging areas cheaper, it will adversely affect the plans of the basic telecom operators licenced to operate in states.
With the DoT decision, the anomalies in the present system which restricted the a `local calling area' to a radius of 5 km from the telephone exchange or the municipal boundary have been rectified.
Both urban and rural subscribers will now get the facility of local charges in a larger area, the release said.
The move will help DoT save expenditure on operation and maintenance of smaller exchanges and enable it to incorporate technology developments with a better quality of service, it added.
Commenting on the decision, communications minister Sushma Swaraj said the long pending demand of sub-urban and rural subscribers for direct dialing facility on reduced call charges with metros and surrounding cities has been fulfilled.
"It is an important customer friendly decision with far reaching effect on development of telecom services," she added. Prominent cities that benefit from this decision include Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta and Chennai.