New fiscal brings glad tidings for telecom subscribers

new delhi: the new financial year2002-03 brings glad tidings for the telecom subscribers, opening up theinternational long distance (ild) market that would reduce tariffs, though amajor impact would be felt only when new players like bharti and data accesslaunch their services. a host of other initiatives like opening up of internettelephony segment and implementation of third phase of telecom tariff orderwould also be given effect from april 1. "it may take some days for new playersto enter the market as security clearances would be required before launchingthe services. nevertheless, competition would bring in improvement in tariffsand quality of the service," akhil gupta, joint managing director of bharti,said. bharti has the licence for ild services and is planning to launch the newservices in april. the bharti group earlier entered into an agreement withvidesh sanchar nigam for interconnect and carriage of the domestic portion ofild traffic orginating from or terminating in the cellular access provider''snetwork. the arrangement was valid till march 31, 2002 and is mutuallyextendable. data access, another ild player, has indicated that a tariffreduction of about 50 per cent might be in the offing for its subscribers. "weare yet to file the new tariffs with the telecom regulator but the reduction islikely to be up to 50 per cent," siddhartha ray, managing director of dataaccess india, said.