Advertisment

Basic phone service providers to offer SMS

author-image
CIOL Bureau
Updated On
New Update

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has allowed all basic phone service providers to offer the facility of SMS to their subscribers. The issue of allowing basic service operators to offer SMS facility was under TRAI's consideration for more than a year and after a series of discussion it has given its approval.

Advertisment

"The Authority, after considering the background information, license terms and conditions, has decided that basic service licensees could provide SMS," TRAI said in a letter sent to the Basic Service Operators.

The basic operators would be allowed to offer the SMS facility to its customers since WLL mobile service is a part of basic telecom services.

With SMS facility, WLL mobile service will become more competitive vis-a-vis cellular mobile services.

Advertisment

The organizations that stand to gain are Tata Indicom, Reliance Infocomm, Shyam Telecom besides MTNL and BSNL.

Inspite of this decision, the issue of interconnectivity between various cell and fixed operators is looming large on the heads of WLL players. WLL players do not have interconnectivity with basic and cell operators in many circles and would probably ask TRAI to interfere in this issue.

Bharti Cellular Delhi Region CEO Manoj Kohli expressed his ignorance about this TRAI announcement. Anil Kumar from Telecom Watchdog said that "telecom service providers have been waiting for the network to be ready for this kind of a service. This is a good move." Commenting on the SMS pricing policy, he did not foresee much changes.

Bharti Teletech CEO Pawan Kapur said, “So far we are the only company with this kind of a product offering and we foresee Touchtel and Tata to implement this new offering. I expect that 10 percent of the basic service providers’ subscribers will take advantage of this service.” Commenting on the SMS pricing policy he said that traditionally fixed line pricing is always lower then other service providers. So it should be accordingly but market forces will decide the ultimate pricing.

(CNS)

tech-news