Regardless of the service provider, Customers can now select the economical STD and ISD tariffs. As internet telephony is open, TRAI is going to make mandate that telcos should offer ther subscribers the liberty to select a carrier of their choice for making long-distance calls, whether domestic (STD) or international (ISD).
This will surely going to give rise to stiff competition in the market, provided the government should act swiftly to modify the licence conditions that enables telcos comply with the TRAI directive.
Suppose, customer is a Vodafone Subscriber and finds out that BSNL is offering the cheapest long-distance tariffs. So the customer can buy a a pre-paid long-distance package from BSNL for a specific duration.Customer have to punch a set of numbers specified in the package to get on to the BSNL network, and then proceed to make the long-distance call, and talk for as long as your pre-paid package permits.
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Internet Service Providers have been allowed to provide unrestricted Internet Telephony that implies that they can terminate Internet telephony calls on PSTN (public switched telecom network) and vice-versa. TRAI has even given the consent to national long distance (NLD) operators to connect to ISPs through public Internet (Internet cloud). TRAI said that ISPs and NLDs will have to thrash out mutual agreements for unrestricted Internet telephony for this to take place. As this will result in lower STD tariffs, this move will further boost competition in the domestic long distance segment. The move will permit calls from personal computers to fixed line and mobile phones. Currently, a voice call can travel between two computers but not from a mobile or a fixed phone. This is expected to open huge channels of revenues for ISPs. According to a regulator, NLD shall make suitable commercial and technical arrangements with access providers i.e PSTN/PLMN (public land mobile network lines) for unrestricted Internet telephony. According to TRAI, TEC (Telecommunication Engineering Centre) will identify distinct number resources for Internet telephony subscribers. Telephone numbers from the identified blocks will be allocated to ISPs, UASPs (unified access service providers), BSOs (basic service operators) and CMSPs (cellular mobile service providers) for Internet telephony.
Vodafone will cut its flat-rate tariffs for laptop-based data usage in the UK, and it will also refresh its data-roaming tariffs.
The mobile operator said on Monday that it will replace its Vodafone Data Unlimited tariff — £45 per month with a fair usage cap of 1GB — with the Mobile Broadband tariff, priced at £25 per month with a 3GB cap.
Subscribers to this monthly tariff will be able to buy 24 hours of HSDPA or 3G connectivity in certain countries for £8.50. The countries covered are mostly European, but also include the US, Australia and Japan.
There is also a separate 24-hour tariff for £8.50 for those who want to use mobile data in the UK without taking out a monthly subscription.
Customers wanting to use Vodafone datacards or USB modems abroad on a regular basis can use the Mobile Broadband Travel tariff, previously called Vodafone Data Travel. Still priced at £95 per month, the tariff has had its data limit doubled from 100MB to 200MB. As with all Vodafone’s data-roaming tariffs, going beyond the limit incurs a fee of £4.25 per megabyte. The tariff covers far more countries than under the ad-hoc roaming usage of the plain Mobile Broadband tariff.
Kyle Whitehill, Vodafone UK’s director of enterprise business, called the tariffs “ground-breaking” and said the operator was the “market leader in 3G broadband and as such has a responsibility to the customer to continually harness this insight to innovate and improve our Mobile Connect service”.
Unlike Vodafone’s data-usage policies for handheld devices, these tariffs all come with no restrictions on what applications can be used — thus permitting the use of internet telephony and instant messaging.
The changes will come into effect on 2 July.
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Choose your own LDC plan (India)
