Airtel, Hutch, Idea, Tata join the OneIndia bandwagon

Category: Offers | No Comments | Posted on March 2, 2006

Most telecom operators have rolled out their versions of the OneIndia plan.

Reliance Infocomm was the first one to announce a single tariff for the entire nation, but with a higher monthly rental of Rs 499.

BSNL and MTNL announced their schemes of Re 1 per minute of STD at Rs 299 monthly rental.

Airtel’s post-paid plan India Home, at a Rs 299 rental, offers Airtel to Airtel local calls at Re 1 for two minutes and all other calls and SMS across India is at Re 1 per minute.

Hutch customers will have to pay an add-on tariff of Rs 250 per month on the existing schemes for making calls to any phone in India at Re 1 per minute.

Under Tata Indicom’s “Talk national, pay local” scheme, post-paid users will pay Rs 299 a month as rental and prepaid customers can avail of the service with a new recharge voucher of Rs 400 with a validity of 30 days.

An Idea user can make STD calls at Re 1 a minute and Idea-to-Idea local calls at Re 1 for 2 minutes for a monthly rental of Rs 299. If a pre-paid user buys a recharge coupon of Rs 249 with 30 days’ validity, he gets to make STD calls at Re 1 a minute, but there’s zero talk-time.

DNA does a reality check on these schemes.

OneIndia, the dream plan of telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran, is all about having one long-distance (STD) tariff for calling anywhere in the country, irrespective of the distance covered, and irrespective of which service the calling party of receiving party used. However, while matching BSNL and MTNL’s Re 1 per minute STD rate, private operators have played around with the monthly rental component, an analyst pointed out.

On the other hand, the call durations may also vary. While some offer Re 1 for a two-minute call within their own networks, yet others offer rates like 40 paise per minute. Then, there are other variations on local tariffs and roaming, too.

Also, the Re 1 plan in most cases is just one of the schemes being offered by the service providers, while the existing ones continue to hold good. And, in most cases, post-paid plans appear to be simpler and more attractive than the pre-paid ones.

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