Chennai: It is a reverse sweep by Bharti Telenet Limited. At a time when the mobile players have jacked up some of their call rates, landline provider in Tamil Nadu Bharti Telenet Limited under the brand Touchtel has done the opposite.

The company has reduced its STD and ISD rates to become the cheapest service provider in the country. As an additional customer friendly move the company has fixed a uniform rate irrespective of the service used by the receiver, fixed or mobile — GSM or CDMA.

While international calls from Touchtel phones to destinations like USA and UK, have been brought down to Rs. 6.99/minute, those for Bangalore and Mumbai will be Rs. 2.99/minute. It is now possible for customers to call locations like Bangalore and Mumbai (i.e., places beyond 200 km outside Tamilnadu) at a rate of Rs. 2.99 per minute.

"On the other hand competition charges Rs.3.60 per minute. Forty per cent of STD users call locations beyond 200 km outside Tamil Nadu. Customers calling locations within Tamil Nadu, will pay Rs. 1.69 per minute for their call as against the competition that charges Rs. 2.40/minute," says Ganesh Mahadevan, head-sales.

Adds M S Ravichandran, chief technology officer, Bharti Infotel Limited, a group company, "Our latest move of uniform tariff for calling mobile and fixed will relieve our customers from confusion as to which phone to use to call which line. The sum and substance is that calls from Touchtel phones is the cheapest."

However he agrees that Touchtel is slightly disadvantaged when it comes to local call rates, as it is slightly higher than Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL). "We have varied schemes that offer free talk time that is nearly equal to the monthly rent," he remarks.

Similarly in the case of billing while BSNL''s software package automatically selects the best plan for the subscriber based on the actual usage, Bharti Telenet''s officials help their customers to migrate to other schemes based on their calling pattern.

According to Ravichandran, Bharti Telenet has a subscriber base of 1.4 lakh. "Our focus is on data traffic. We have 14,000 subscribers for our broadband service."