In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Milind Deora, Minister of State for Communications and IT said that operators can determine call tariffs, depending on the market conditions and commercial requirements. However, he added that this must be carried out within the regulatory framework of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
Deora said, “Operators have the flexibility to fix the tariff for mobile services depending on the market conditions and other commercial considerations subject to the regulatory principles of non-discrimination, compliance of interconnection usage charges and non- predation.?
Deora?s statement follows the recent hike in call charges by several operators, including Bharti airtel, Vodafone Essar, Reliance Communications and Idea Cellular. Prior to this, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had asked these operators to justify this tariff hike.
TATA DOCOMO first doubled its net tariffs for GSM services in Tamil Nadu (from Re 0.01 per six seconds to per three seconds), followed by other circles. The operator also doubled STD call rates for new subscribers after a year of connection and increased local and national SMS charges by 67 per cent and 25 per cent respectively.
Thereafter, Bharti airtel followed suit and increased its tariffs by 20 per cent for prepaid subscribers in the
Following this, Idea Cellular and Vodafone Essar also increased tariffs for their prepaid plans in select circles while Bharti airtel applied its new tariffs to other circles. Idea increased its tariff from Re 0.01 per second to Re 0.012 per second for all calls to other networks in the Delhi service area under the per-second billing scheme, before revising call and SMS rates for circles like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.
Vodafone Essar, on the other hand, increased tariffs in 12 circles from Re 0.01 per second to Re 0.12-Re 0.15 per second.
