Calls Between Chennai-tn, Mumbai-maha & Kolkata-wb

[kams19 0]

TELEPHONE subscribers in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh will now be able to make calls to a mobile user anywhere within the State at local call charges. This comes as a result of the Government's decision to permit direct connectivity between these states and their respective capital cities, which until now was treated as a separate licence area.

This means a cell-to-cell or a fixed-to-cell call between Vellore and Chennai, for instance, will be a local call. Until now, since Chennai was considered to be a separate circle from the remaining part of Tamil Nadu, a Vellore-to-Chennai call was treated like an STD call. Similarly a call between Pune and Mumbai and between Kharagpur and Kolkata will also now become a local call.

In the case of Uttar Pradesh, the State was divided into two circles - UP (West) and UP (East) - for offering telephone services. With today's policy announcement, subscribers in Lucknow, which is in UP (East), can make a call to Agra in UP (West) at local call rates.

The decision does not have any implication for telephone users residing in other States since the problem of having another circle within a circle was unique to these four States only. This difference arose due to historical reasons. Licenses for mobile services were first granted in the metro cities of Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. Subsequently, mobile services licenses were granted in telecom circles. Thus, there is separate mobile service licence for metro cities and their corresponding remaining parts of the States.

Announcing the policy decision, Mr Dayanidhi Maran, Minister for Communication and IT, said, "The Government has decided to remove this difference in pubic interest. However, the access providers will operate within their existing licensed service areas and shall not be permitted to create infrastructure outside their licensed service areas for the purpose of inter-service area connectivity. The access providers may take lease lines for such connectivity. This inter-service area connectivity shall be only for terminating traffic."

This also simplifies the dialling procedure for calls within these States as subscribers would not be required to prefix "0".

Welcoming the initiative Mr T.V. Ramachandran, Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India, said, "This decision is an important step in demolishing artificial barriers between service areas. We hope that the second step of extending this facility to all other service areas across the country would be taken soon. The liberalisation of connectivity between all circles would create an important launching pad for the industry's objective of reaching 200 million mobile subscribers by 2007."

AirTel, which has operations across all the four States and the metro cities, announced that it was waiving even the roaming charges for its subscribers. This could become an issue with smaller operators such as BPL, which may not be able to match the offer on roaming since it does not have licence for Chennai while it has operations in Tamil Nadu.

[kams19 0]

Call Mumbai to Kolkata at local rates

CHENNAI: The Department of Telecom (DoT) on Saturday permitted inter-service area connectivity in the states of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. This means, calls within these four states will be treated as local calls.

The move will have a positive impact on nearly 17.69 million subscribers in the GSM segment alone. This includes 7.5 million users in Maharashtra, nearly 4.5 million subscribers in Tamil Nadu, 2.15 million users in West Bengal and a little over 3.5 million subscribers in UP.

With a little over 42 million GSM subscribers in the country, Saturday's order will impact about 40% of that figure, besides a large base of CDMA subscribers in these states and spur the growth of mobile telephony in these states.

So far, it was an artificial separation, by telecom authorities, of a state capital from rest of the state, in the case of Mumbai and Maharashtra, Chennai and Tamil Nadu, and Kolkata and West Bengal. And it was the same with Uttar Pradesh. Incidentally, this was not the case with the subscribers in other states, who were free to call anyone, anywhere within the state at local call charges. The government has decided to remove this difference in public interest, said a statement issued by DoT.

This difference arose due to historical reasons, when licences for mobile services were initially granted in the four metro cities of Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. Subsequently, such licenses were granted in other circles.

However, the latest order does not permit a service provider in a circle to create infrastructure outside their existing licensed service areas for the purpose of inter-service area connectivity. This means, operators like Hutch in Chennai and BPL Mobile in rest of Tamil Nadu cannot extend their services to RoTN and Chennai respectively.

In fact, the order has brought in parity between private cellular operators and BSNL, which was already offering the local call facility between these two circles in Tamil Nadu, citing that there was no access deficit charges to be paid

[Dilbert 0]

Guess what??? With all these goodies probably my bill will be negative...

DoT zindabad......

Calls amongst the four states will be local is a real icing on the cake...

Bye bye landline.....

[tezo 2]

Can somebdy explain me:: If u need to call to mumbai mobile no. from Virar or Kalyan u shud have STD in ur land line, u have to dial 0 n then mobile no.

Now is it possible that u can dial directly mobile no. I mean 93xxxx mumbai mobile no. and 93xxx pune mobile no. without having STD in ur landline??

[abc123 0]

Can somebdy explain me:: If u need to call to mumbai mobile no. from Virar or Kalyan u shud have STD in ur land line, u have to dial 0 n then mobile no.

Now is it possible that u can dial directly mobile no. I mean 93xxxx mumbai mobile no. and 93xxx pune mobile no. without having STD in ur landline??

32328[/snapback]

Yes ..............It should be possible from 25th according to dirictive from dot.....................

LETS HOPE FOR THE BEST

[rakesh5295 0]

i havent read about it more in media or any operators!! hope tomorrow everything becomes more clear.....

[Dilbert 0]

There is no communication from any of the cellcos about the new mobile policy either....seems that none of the cellcos are happy, coz these metros were supposed to be their cash cows.

DoT Zindabaad.....

[abc123 0]

hey guys atleawst bsnl has come out with the tarrif plan............

http://www.bsnl.co.in/newsdetailed.php?news_id=207

[tezo 2]

hurrrrrrrrrrray..... it's all clear now. U can call from Virar, Kalyan or Bhiwandi to mumbai mobile without dialing 0, means its a local call, I have tried it is working. Hope there will be no roming 4 mobile users if they travel anywhere in maharashtra.

[abc123 0]

yeah.............its even frm MTNL u cal call maharastra cell nos. without std

and even frm mobile u can dial without 0 ........................but no idea of roaming........................

Does ony one have idea of roaming...............................

[ani_meher 42]

According to news, Mumbai n Maharashtra are one circle now for all mobiles. My mobile is of Pune i.e. Maharashtra circle, so for dialling from Mumbai, I had to add 0 before it, i.e STD call. From today, I can dial the number from Mumbai without having to add 0, that is I can make a local call to that mobile. But when I call any Mumbai Reliance cell from my Pune cell ( I have a 440 card) my 80ps are cut, which means I am in roaming! Also, 1.79 is cut everytime I receive a call, even afer the call is made local in Mumbai.

So can someone pls explain what the heck is this policy? Good GSK numbers are hard to find in Mumbai, and as I have shifted from Pune to Mumbai forever, I want to keep my old cell number without having to pay the roaming charges in Mumbai. Is that possible by any chance? Can reliance provide me similar number in Mumbai circle?

[abc123 0]

hey guys spoke with reliance and airtel people no changes as of now. there answer is we are in process will inform u as soon as it is done

[Sadikk 301]

According to news, Mumbai n Maharashtra are one circle now for all mobiles. My mobile is of Pune i.e. Maharashtra circle, so for dialling from Mumbai, I had to add 0 before it, i.e STD call. From today, I can dial the number from Mumbai without having to add 0, that is I can make a local call to that mobile. But when I call any Mumbai Reliance cell from my Pune cell ( I have a 440 card) my 80ps are cut, which means I am in roaming! Also, 1.79 is cut everytime I receive a call, even afer the call is made local in Mumbai.

So can someone pls explain what the heck is this policy? Good GSK numbers are hard to find in Mumbai, and as I have shifted from Pune to Mumbai forever, I want to keep my old cell number without having to pay the roaming charges in Mumbai. Is that possible by any chance? Can reliance provide me similar number in Mumbai circle?

32400[/snapback]

Change ur SDCA, its possible they will give u same number, enquire with WW.

[Chirag 5]

Also, 1.79 is cut everytime I receive a call, even afer the call is made local in Mumbai.

32400[/snapback]

Since u r roaming in a circle outside Pune, u out to be charged 4 incoming calls. Dunno abt ur Outgoing thing!

[ani_meher 42]

Change ur SDCA, its possible they will give u same number, enquire with WW.

32412[/snapback]

I just enquired with *333, they said the number will be changed alongwith SDCA, n I'll get some random number.

Can anyone here help me keeping my old number or getting either similar or different but easy-to-remember reliance cell number in Mumbai?

[since u r roaming in a circle outside Pune, u out to be charged 4 incoming calls. Dunno abt ur Outgoing thing!

32415[/snapback]

But then what's the point that Mumbai n Maharashtra are 1 circle? How can different operators have different definitions of circle?

Edited May 25, 2005 by ani_meher

[kams19 0]

even i called the CC sometime back, they told they are drafting the new tariff scheme and it will be out by 26th evening, im going to Pune day after tom, hope they waive off the incoming charges by then.. as of now, the old tariffs apply and the only change is in outgoing tariff and dailing procedure, which is clear to all.

Edited May 25, 2005 by kams19

[rakesh5295 0]

suppose i call to solpaur from mumbai it is local call but will it be charged at local rates? or the distance will still keep the std rated fro out going.

[kams19 0]

As of now, calls from mumbai landline are going to Maharashtra BSNL mobiles only. Reliance, Idea, BPL, Airtel not working.

I suppose other way round are working i.e. Maharashtra landlines to Mumbai Mobiles...

[Dilbert 0]

As of now, calls from mumbai landline are going to Maharashtra BSNL mobiles only. Reliance, Idea, BPL, Airtel not working.

I suppose other way round are working i.e. Maharashtra landlines to Mumbai Mobiles...

32440[/snapback]

That doesn't seem to be the case. Till now only BSNL has announced their revised tariff plans...(See link somewhere above). Moreover since BSNL does not have a network in Mumbai...hence calls to other operators in Mumbai from a BSNL cell in Maharashtra will be billed at a 45 sec. pulse.

That makes me wonder, in roaming all the GSM operators share each others networks...since the revenues were higher in roaming they could be shared for using each others networks. Now with calls becoming local & their earnings kinda getting down to peanuts, will they still share networks or probably invest monies in more infrastructure??? Since sharing such low revenues doesn't work & yeah remember incoming is absolutely free..!!! So any guesses what will they do??

[ani_meher 42]

As of now, calls from mumbai landline are going to Maharashtra BSNL mobiles only. Reliance, Idea, BPL, Airtel not working.

I suppose other way round are working i.e. Maharashtra landlines to Mumbai Mobiles...

32440[/snapback]

Well, calling to Pune Reliance cell from my Mumbai home is working fine... I guess it's just a matter of time when all the operators abide to the rule. But damn they should CANCELL the roaming charges in the two (now one) circles, and shouldn't just stop making the calls local.

[anujit 0]

I don't think they are local calls!

You will still be charged based on distance "within your own circle." So if you think you can call at local call rates between Nagpur & Bombay you have another thing coming!

[abc123 0]

I don't think they are local calls!

You will still be charged based on distance "within your own circle." So if you think you can call at local call rates between Nagpur & Bombay you have another thing coming!

32465[/snapback]

Hey calling mobile will not be charge as per distance. yes calling landline will be charge as per distance

[linuxguy 0]

wow, there is a lot of confusion! is this another tactic of telcos to rip us off?

[abc123 0]

wow, there is a lot of confusion! is this another tactic of telcos to rip us off?

32472[/snapback]

yeah guys..................

This things shld have been done from yesterday............ but as operator are taking time and making as much money they can................ b`coz they have to stop roaming and metros where there main reveune market which will now go............. If they dont do in next 1-2 days we all have to take the matter to Trai........if possible

[anujit 0]

No abc... look at your rate charts ---- there are 3 type of calls - local, intercircle STD and outside circle STD.

Intercircle STD is based on distance as is outside circle STD. So now you will be charged intercircle std charges for calling Bombay from Nagpur. It would be very silly if you paid intercircle STD charges for calls from Nagpur to Pune and local charges for calls from Nagpur to Bombay!