New Delhi, Sep 02: Cellular telephony is becoming the poor man’s phone in true sense. MTNL is launching new schemes with a monthly rental of Rs 100. There will be no charge for caller line identification services. Call charges will be Rs 1.90 for a one-minute call.
The new tariff scheme will be available to the customers from Wednesday, said MTNL spokesperson. MTNL is also targeting its existing 40 lakh landline subscribers in Delhi and Mumbai by offering them telephony at zero activation fee. For others one-time activation fee is Rs 500.


Under another scheme, that will also be launched on Wednesday, MTNL is offering calls worth Rs 300 free with a monthly commitment of Rs 300. This means that the subscribers will not be required to pay any rental under this scheme. This scheme directly competes with the prepaid schemes of all the operators. Currently, more than 70% of the new cellular subscribers take prepaid connections. “The idea to make post-paid schemes more attractive than the prepaid schemes,” said the MTNL spokesperson.

In order to attract corporate customers, MTNL is offering closed user group (CUG) schemes. Under this scheme, the members of the group can talk for unlimited time to other members of the same group. Rental for this scheme is Rs 200 per member. Call charges are Rs 1.60 for a one-minute cell-to-cell call and Rs 1.90 for a one-minute cell-to-fixed and cell-to-WLL call. This scheme is catching on among corpoartes and MTNL has got close to 200 subscribers in last three weeks.
MTNL is providing cellular services in Delhi and Mumbai. It has close to 145,000 subscribers in Delhi and 165,000 subscribers in Mumbai. It has a capacity of 250,000 lines each in Delhi and in Mumbai. It is in the process of procuring GSM equipment of a capacity of four lakh lines each in Delhi and in Mumbai. The process of procuring lines is expected to be complete within a month.