You'll soon get to choose the cheapest STD and ISD tariffs, irrespective of your service provider. After recommending the opening up of internet telephony services, telecom regulator Trai this week will mandate that telcos offer subscribers the freedom to choose their carrier for making long-distance calls, whether domestic (STD) or international (ISD). This will usher in new competition in long-distance calls, provided the government acts promptly to amend licence conditions to enable telcos to comply with the Trai directive.
This is, however, not quite an implementation of the carrier access code (CAC) project mooted several years ago. In the face of resistance by telcos to CAC and the department of telecom's (DoT) willingness to play along, Trai has come up with a variation.
This is how it will work. Suppose you are a Bharti subscriber. But you find that BSNL offers the cheapest long-distance tariffs. You can buy a pre-paid long-distance package from BSNL for so many seconds. You then punch in a set of numbers specified in the package to get onto the BSNL network and make your calls. You can talk for as long as your pre-paid package permits.
The regulator will also mandate that all telcos offer their customers the facility to purchase pre-paid long-distance packages or virtual calling cards on the internet. Globally, long-distance tariffs have fallen 20-53% after customers were allowed to choose their operator. Even players like Gail, RailTel and Power-Grid that have long-distance backbones can offer this facility, along with telcos that provide customer access.
The Trai directive is bound to hit the bottom lines of all major operators. Telecom stocks slumped on Tuesday following Trai's recommendations on net telephony, which will adversely impact the business models of all telcos.ET
