Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Monday, May 05, 2003
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Monday, May 05, 2003 |
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Info-Tech
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Telecommunications New telecom tariffs — PCOs make distress calls to TRAI Our Bureau
HYDERABAD, May 4 WHILE cellular users are rejoicing over free incoming calls from May 1, and some of the land line users are fuming over the hike in charges for calls made to a cellular user, there is yet another group of people in the telecom value chain — the owners of public call offices or PCOs — who are a disgruntled lot. The All-India Sanchar Seva Public Call Office Society, a body representing PCO booth owners, on Sunday appealed to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to review the tariff charges fixed for group dialling, private basic dialling and calls to Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. They contended that the recent order had impacted the STD PCO owners as people, who were hitherto making calls from land lines to cell phones and limited mobility WLL (wireless in local loop), had stopped visiting PCOs. This had impacted their gross collections significantly. Addressing a press conference here on Sunday, Mr Surjit Singh Khungar, Chairman and Mr G. Satyanarayana Reddy, President, of the PCO Society, and their representatives, claimed that the new TRAI-recommended telecom tariff structure had literally driven the people out of the 15 lakh STD PCOs in the country since they were scared of the abnormal hike in charges to cellular and WLL phones from land lines. Alleging that the cellular companies were responsible for some of their woes, they said the Government had the responsibility to safeguard the interests of the STD booth/PCO owners as most of the booths were run by ex-servicemen, war widows and handicapped persons. Following tariff changes over the years, already about 4 lakh PCOs were closed down, they contended. "Our business has been adversely impacted and unless changes are made immediately, there will be more casualties in the PCO business. The society demands TRAI to enhance the pulse rate from the present 30 seconds to one minute and also consider this under group dialling as this would benefit both the PCOs as also the public," they said. These developments have come in as a surprise for these PCO owners even as they are in the process of upgrading their establishments to serve as service delivery points for ticketing and e-mails. These centres, while providing a host of services, are in the process of becoming as e-kiosks.
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