|
TRAI defers second round of tariff re-balancing
Neeraja Kumar
New Delhi: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has decided to postpone the second phase of tariff re-balancing by one month, to August 30, following a request from the Department of Telecom Services to review the Telecommunications Tariff Order 1999 (TTO'99), which prescribes a further reduction in long distance charges with effect from April 1, 2000. According to the TRAI, DTS has communicated to the Authority that during the financial year 1999-2000, the net adverse impact on the revenues of the DTS may be in the range of approximately Rs 2,000 to Rs 2,200 crore, due to the first phase of tariff re-balancing. And a further reduction in charges, should be reviewed so that DTS does not face further loss of revenue, curtailing its capability to finance further expansion programmes. To conduct the required review, the TRAI requested for relevant data for the financial year 1999-2000 from all operators.In order to get the inputs from operators and for its analysis, it has deferred the second phase of tariff re-balancing by four months vide Telecommunications Tariff (Seventh Amendment) Order 2000, dated March 2000. Since the required data was received only very recently, according to TRAI, it has left no time for the Authority to process and analyse the information for the review. It has therefore been decided that the time period within which the decision is to be taken on the tariff changes be extended by one more month, till August 31, 2000. Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
|