The positive effects of India’s growing competition in the mobile services space is gradually getting reflected nowadays. While just last week, Tata Indicom announced a flat rate for calls irrespective of call duration new entrant in the Indian telecom sector, SSTL’s MTS today announced waiving off processing fee for a new lifetime scheme. 

Under its newly launched MTalk plan, subscribers can make local calls at 1 paise per second in addition to being eligible for full talk time for lifetime. STD calls under this offer will be charged 2 paise per second. Moreover subscribers may opt for MSaver voucher at Re.1 per day whereby the subscribers will gain 50 % reduced tariffs for STD and local calls as well as 100 SMSes daily. This is being branded as ‘Power of 1.’

“MTS is committed to setting new benchmarks for Indian telecom industry in terms of quality and pricing. While aggressively expanding in various telecom circles all over India, we have also been providing excellent quality network and services to our customers at unbeatable prices, which has helped us garner a base of over 1.7 million happy subscribers in such a short time. MTS also boasts of a robust high capacity and uncongested network based on superior CDMA technology,” says SSTL President and CEO, Vsevolod Rozanov. 

The CEO says that there are more than 400 million prepaid subscribers in India. Assuming on an average each prepaid subscriber recharges four times every month and pays Rs 2 on each recharge, a total of Rs 320 crore per month in way of processing fee is incurred by the user community. MTS reasons that if all the operators decide to waive off this fee, the end-user community can collectively save about Rs 3,500 crore.

“Our MTalk plan provides the simplest and best total-value service available in the market today that offers great value in call charges, talk time and discount vouchers. MTalk is an honest and true-value plan with all tariff vouchers at one price point, so that there is no ambiguity for the customers. To be convinced of its advantages, customers only need to ask themselves this one question – Does any other mobile service offer them all of these in the same package – one-second charging, full talk time on every top-up for a lifetime, and fabulous Re.1 per day MSavers for half price calling”, adds Rozanov.

New subscribers interested in opting for the scheme can buy a SIM for Rs 49 which comes with an Rs 10 talk time. Existing subscribers can migrate to the new scheme without any additional charge.

MTS says that the per second billing will result in 25 % savings to the subscribers. Additional 28 % can be saved due to the waiver of processing fee. Subscribers charging for Rs 10 and Rs 20 which contribute 70% of all recharges in India as per MTS, the ne wplan will provide 28 % extra talk time on Rs 10 recharge and 12 % more talk time on Rs 20 recharge.

The new plan is available across MTS’s areas of operations in India i.e. Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Kolkata, Rest of West Bengal and Bihar.

The new offer and the pitch of the company is seen as a move to challenge the incumbent operators to follow suit. The incumbent operators however have not responded to any of the new competitive plans introduced recently. One hopes that end-user community is benefited across the board, whether belonging to a new entrant or to an incumbent operator.