Telcos take tariff war to internet

Mumbai, Dec. 16: After calls and SMSes, telecom operators have extended the tariff war to data download services.

MTS, the mobile service brand of Sistema Shyam Teleservices, which started its operations in Mumbai, Maharashtra and Goa circle on Wednesday, has not only offered half a paisa per second tariff for all local calls but also have offered free download of 15 GB data, worth Rs 1,500 for the first month.

While speaking with the media persons in Mumbai, Mr Vsevolod Rozanov, the president and CEO of Sistema Shyam, said: “We are planning to acquire six to seven per cent market share in the next quarter. Sistema has invested $1.5 billion till date in its Indian operations.”

In the past one year MTS has secured over 23 lakh subscribers in the telecom circles of Kolkata, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Bihar, Jharkhand, Karnataka, and Delhi. MTS has more than 10 crore subscribers all over the world.

On Wednesday, two other operators — S Tel and Loop Mobile — unveiled the expansions and new tariff plans.

S Tel, a joint venture between the Siva Group and BMIC Ltd, a subsidiary of Bahrain Telecommuni-cation Company (Batelco), announced its plans to launch its GSM mobile services in India.

The company will roll out its services beginning with the Himachal Pradesh telecom circle where services are expected to be launched this week.

S Tel has licences in telecom circles like Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, the North East and Jammu and Kashmir and plans to launch the services in these circles soon.

The company launched two tariff plans which will charge the consumer one paisa per second and 50 paisa per minute respectively, both for STD and Local outgoing calls.

Mumbai-based Loop Mobile has also introduced a tariff plan for their prepaid customers wherein the subscribers would able to call other Loop mobile customer at the rate of 10 paise per minute or one paise per second.

High tension war
Indian telecom operators have launched a tariff war to get a pie of the fast-growing telecom market by slashing call tariff and offering longer pulse.

Tata Indicom, the CDMA brand of Tata Teleservices, will provide three minutes free talktime to its prepaid customers on using as much time on local and STD calls as part of its Pay Per Second offer.

MTS has offered half a paisa per second tariff for all local calls and free download of 15 GB data, worth Rs 1,500 for the first month.

RCom offers 1,000 free minutes of usage for GSM subscribers for calls to any other Reliance mobile in the Delhi-National Capital region.

S Tel offers two tariff plans which will charge the consumer one paisa per second and 50 paisa
per minute respectively, both for STD and Local outgoing calls.