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MTNL spares VSNL, undercuts ISP rates by only 15%

Bowing to pressure from within the government, the MTNL board, which met in New Delhi on Friday, decided to drop the proposal for a 30 per cent cut at the last moment.

T O D A Y

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For now, the company has undercut the Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited tariff by only 15 per cent.

Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited Chairman and Managing Director S Rajagopalan told reporters that "This tariff is only valid for three months and will be reduced later."

The company will do a "soft launch" of the service on February 2 followed by the commercial launch on February 9.

The tariff for the service will be in addition to local call charges.

MTNL will offer 5,000 connections each in New Delhi and Bombay to start with, followed by further increase to 20,000 connections by April 1999. The company is aiming for 100,000 connections by the end of this calendar year, said Rajagopalan

Consumers are likely to face less trouble in accessing their accounts because MTNL has promised a line to subscriber ratio of 1:10 with 480 ports each in Delhi and Bombay.

MTNL will also offer interconnection at 4 MBPS, with a dynamic re-routing facility. The connection will be at a speed of 28.8 KBPS, necessitating a separate modem in order to benefit from this high-speed service.

For the ISDN dial-up service at 64 KBPS, MTNL will charge Rs 4,675 for 100 hours, Rs 10,625 for 250 hours and Rs 16,150 for 500 hours.

In the case of a 128 KBPS connection, the company proposes to charge Rs 9,350 for 100 hours, Rs 21,250 for 250 hours and Rs 32,300 for 500 hours.

MTNL has also launched a number of new 'intelligent network' services including a televoting service for television opinion polls and an account-card calling aimed at travelling executives and corporations.

MTNL has posted a 25 per cent increase in net profits to Rs 3.4 billion in the third quarter of the current financial year. The company has registered a net profit of Rs 2.72 billion during October-December 1998, according to a company release.

Total revenue of the company during the quarter has increased by 10.67 per cent to Rs 13.06 billion compared to Rs 11.8 billion during October-December 1997.

MTNL has also recorded a 161.27 per cent increase in other income to Rs 559.9 million from Rs 21.43 in the quarter as against the third quarter of 1997.

- Compiled from the Indian media

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