It promises to be another significant step towards ensuring the death of distance as the revolutionary ‘OneIndia’ concept looks all set to remove the disparity between local and STD calls.
Soon there will be no distinction between STD and local calls. There will be uniform rates in OneIndia approach.Union Minister for Communica-tions & Information Technology, Government of India.
The concept of OneIndia could be music to the ears of over a billion telephone subscribers in India who until now had to pay high tariffs while making STD calls; local calls in the country are much cheaper compared to STD calls despite the fact that STD call rates have seen a sub-stantial fall in recent times. Though the idea sounds a bit ambitious, it could soon become reality if the min-istry of telecommunications, Govern-ment of India, has its way. If the idea sees the light of day it would be a sort of a milestone for the telecommunica-tions industry and would surely go a long way in galvanizing the industry further. What the concept OneIndia would effectively mean is a single unified tariff regime without making any distinction between STD and local calls. For subscribers, it would mean affordable telephony, while for opera-tors, it would mean more revenues as call duration will increase. However, on the flip side is the issue of Access Deficit Charge or ADC, which needs to be resolved if that vision has to turn into a reality. |
