Bharti slashes rates, others to follow

By Our Correspondent

New Delhi, April 28: There are good times ahead for mobile subscribers. Airtel on Monday slashed of its STD and roaming call rates for customers by upto 43 per cent. This may trigger a price war in the telecom sector. Airtel’s announcement will force the other mobile operators to also reduce tariffs to nearly the same level, say telecom analysts.

Airtel reduced STD rates to Rs 1.5 per minute from Rs 2.65 per minute for both pre-paid and post-paid customers. While on roaming, incoming calls will now cost Rs 1 per minute from Rs 1.75 per minute earlier. The outgoing local call rate on roaming has been slashed to Rs 1 per minute from Rs 1.4 per minute and STD at Rs 1.5. The new tariffs will be effective from Wednesday.

Bharti Airtel, president and CEO, Mr Manoj Kohli, said that he hopes after reducing the rates the company will be able to add more minutes of usage (MOU). "When we reduced the local call charges to Rs 1, we added 33 minutes of new usage in the last quarter," he said.

He also asked the government to rationalise various taxes and levies on the telecom sector to make calls more cheaper.

Analysts told this newspaper that the all telecom companies will have to follow Airtel lead and slash STD and roaming charges. "Presently the competition is very severe in the telecom sector and government has also given licences to new players. Therefore it will be impossible for a telecom operator not to match the price offered by its competitor," said Mr Bhavesh Shah, vice-president, research, at Asit Mehta.

Other telecom majors are also matching this offer.

Later, RCom announced a new scheme, where its customers can make unlimited free STD and local calls within the same network. The post paid customers will have to pay Rs 440 and prepaid customers have to pay Rs 496 a month for this service. Idea Cellular said that it is examining the market and then will make a decision.