The government has reduced the one-time licence fee for long distance services to Rs 25 million from January 1, 2006.

The government has reduced the one-time licence fee for long distance services to Rs 25 million from January 1, 2006. The earlier fee for international long distance (ILD) services was Rs 250 million and Rs 1 billion for national long distance (NLD) services.

DoT has also removed most of the mandatory conditions that had made the setting up of infrastructure a costly proposition so far.

In the absence of the carrier access code (CAC), however, the access providers have had to depend on long distance service providers for carrying their traffic. Once the CAC is in place, call charges may further reduce.