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New Telephone Tariff
15th Jan 1999 Padam Jain @bom4.vsnl.net.in
LOCAL PHONE CALLS AT OUT-OF-THE-WORLD HIGH RATES
For those of you who are not aware of the telephone tariff hike
proposed by TRAI, read on carefully.
As per the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act 1997, the power to fix the telephone charges
now rests with the TRAI. Pursuant to these powers, TRAI has now
recommended a telephone tariff hike for local calls, which to say
the least, is shocking.
The TRAI has also recommended a four-fold increase in telephone
tariff for local calls as follows :
* It proposes to reduce free calls from the present 150 to 120 for
a bi-monthly period.
*There will not be any slab wise local call charges -80 paise going up to rs 1.40.There will be
uniform charge of rs 1.30
*Presently one call is charged for 5 minutes to reduce the traffic during peak time..This is
proposed to be reduced to 3 minutes. no discount is available even if you make a call at 2 AM.We
have given in.
*The rental is proposed to be increased to Rs 620.
Table 1 shows how your bi-monthly telephone bill is likely to zoom if these
proposals are allowed to be introduced in the near future.
Table 2 shows the figures of Revenue surplus over expenditure earned by
DoT and MTNL during the last few years.
Needless to mention that such provocative telephone tariff hike is
unjust, unfair and uncalled for.
All of us,the Consumers and consumer bodies should
vehemently oppose this
NEW TARIFF RATES
Present Bill amount New bill amount
100 Rs. 399 167 Rs.714.15 79%
200 Rs. 441 334 Rs.943.10 114%
250 Rs. 483 417 Rs.1,056.10 119%
450 Rs.651 750 Rs.1,511.00 132%
1000 Rs.1,291 1667 Rs.2,762.15 113%
REVENUE SURPLUS OVER EXPENDITURE EARNED BY DoT AND MTNL
Accounting year Amount
1991-92 1,431.00
1992-93 2,040.32
1993-94 2,544.80
1994-95 4,103.14
1996-97 6,416.05
It is clear that enough money is available to absorb any reduction in STD/ISD charges
What TRAI has to do is to find out the areas of inefficiency as well as the reported ring of
Telephone staff who provide long distance call without these getting billed.There are many other
areas of inefficiency,corruption etc which must be looked into.
Further MTNL has laid ducts all over the place in Mumbai but does not use it.Why ?Why does it
keep digging the road for laying cables ?
It seems that Dept. of Telecom will give in and accept a modified higher charges.
The idea of Regulatory Authority,one hoped was to protect the interest of the consumer.But here
it seems that it is protecting the private service provider.Even the mobile phone tariff has
been jacked up.
TRAI says that long distance calls are subsidizing local calls.It has however not published any
figure of phones which do not make any std/isd calls.
There are a lot of user who have locked their std/isd facility to avoid wrong billing.
TRAI has not considered the impact of this tariff on a lot of people who are in the lower middle
class,lower class,retirees etc.
please us any media that you can to protest against this unjustified tariff increase.
15th Jan 1999
Harshal Jawale @it.com.pl
<Note to Moderator : I know you would not post this mail because of
copyright concerns. However, you should evolve a policy to let
Inn-mates quote news sources. Pl. feel free to edit, in whatsoever
manner u please. However, do let the gist of it be posted.
In the event you do not post, atleast inform me of your policies>
I completely agree abt the outrageousness of the new tariff !
however there have been developments lately and TRAI seems to
have stepped down from its earlier stand.
Indian Express reported in its Jan 14 news item,
"January 14: In a climbdown from its earlier stand, the
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) seems to be
more amenable to reducing the tariff hikes in telephone call
rates for local calls as well as the almost 100 per cent hike
in telephone rentals proposed by them. The TRAI has also
decided to make itself ``available'' for discussions with
Members of Parliament, after earlier stating that any
discussions with MPs would ``politicise'' the tariff setting
procedures......."
(For full story, go to
http://www.expressindia.com/ie/daily/19990115/01550235.html)
(please note I'm not connected with the Express Group in any way)
The present govt. would not like to hike the tariff after suffering
humiliating defeat at the hands of the humble "onion"
I wonder if we can find out if Govt. depts have email ids, so that
we can send them the citizens' concerns.......
- harshal
17th Jan 1999
CUSTOMER CARE CENTRE @bom2.vsnl.net.in
Dear Mr Jain, Thanks for your detailed presentation. Its indeed revealing, the TRAI's brazen unaccountability to Indian consumer. If your figures do not lie, the "liars" should figure in TRAI's pretentions of consumer service. Please count on my support for any action group to project genuine consumer concern. Thanks once again to Vani for this active forum. Regards Ramkumar
