Govt concerned at falling landline revenues, but says no tariff hike

New Delhi, May 13 (UNI) The Government is fighting a stiff battle to prevent a further fall in the revenues accruing from landline phones, but official sources say that the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) will not reduce monthly landline rentals to play on the volume games.

The sources point out that there is a fall in revenue income on account of surrendered landline connections as well as other factors such as steep reduction in telephone tariffs, especially mobile phones, as well as introduction of several customer friendly plans.

The tariff war in the field of mobile telephony has come as a bonanza for the customer, but has also resulted a switch away from landline phones to mobile phones.

The Government is faced with a peculiar situation, where it is losing revenues from a fall in the number of landline customers, but has not able to compensate this from any substantial hike in the use of the MTNL mobile phones, the only public sector mobile phone provider.

The competition is intense due to innovative customer friendly schemes offered by private telecom providers as well as substantial reduction in call rates.

Concerned at the state of affairs, the Government has taken steps to shore up its revenues including bringing out a number of client friendly tariff schemes, including the popular 'One India Plan'.

There is also an attempt to improve the quality of service.

Broadband connections are being provided on fixed lines at competitive tariff rates to retain the base of landline users as also digitalisation of all exchanges.

Besides, sources said, new value added servicces like broadband, Intelligence Network (IN) based servicces, Internet Protoccol Television (IPTV) and new Remote Station Units (RSUs) were also being provided to landline customers at affordable rates.

UNI