NEW DELHI: Nearly three weeks after Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited made all its Delhi-Mumbai landline calls "local", its officials here are upbeat over the response from the subscribers. The duration and number of calls have gone up considerably.

Prior to the launch of the new tariff, 3-lakh STD minutes of phone calls were being made between the two metros every month. Now this has shot up to 5-lakh STD minutes. On June 1, MTNL slashed its call rate between Delhi and Mumbai from Rs. 1.90 per minute to 40 paise per minute, besides bringing the cities under the 95-dialing facility (local call).

"Subscribers are elated over the steep drop in STD charges between Delhi and Mumbai. The call rate is registering a good rise on a daily basis that might help us in increasing our profits further," said MTNL Executive Director (Delhi) A.K. Arora.

Though experts say that call durations should increase by at least five to six times to enable MTNL to earn profits after the launch of the new tariff structure, the fact is that earlier MTNL used to pay Rs.1.10 per call as carrier charges to other operators and since the new scheme was launched they have hired their own bandwidth for which yearly payment would be made, said Mr. Arora, adding: "This way we will be able to reduce our costs to a large extent and help the company to make it a profitable project."

The drop in tariffs is the result of a tie-up with Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) for leasing out national long distance infrastructure. Till now, MTNL used to route its STD traffic between Delhi and Mumbai through the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited network.

Due to its tie-up with VSNL, MTNL is likely to save about Rs.12 crores a year. So far it has been a win-win situation for MTNL as no other telecom operator has managed to reduce its call charges between the two metros. MTNL has about 38-lakh fixed-line subscribers in the two cities, accounting for about 90 per cent of the total subscribers.

While it earns Rs.100-150 crores as revenue from STD calls between Delhi and Mumbai, of which 80 per cent (around 12-crore STD minutes) are made from fixed-line phones.

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