The cut in rates have resulted from the recent migration to a revenue sharing regime allowed for private cell phone companies, instead of the earlier fixed licence fee regime.

Apart from this, the charges for calls made from a normal landline phone to a cellphone, which will be applicable as soon as incoming calls on cellphones are made free (referred to as the Calling Party Pays or CPP), will also be slashed by around 30 per cent.

The proposals are likely to be announced by TRAI when theyhold their open house discussions on the date for launching CPP on Tuesday next week. These proposals will allow Government operator -- the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) and private cellphone operators to give their reactions to the TRAI proposals which would be considered by the authority before making the rates effective.

The landline to cellphone charge which was fixed by the TRAI at Rs 3.60 in their tariff proposals announced in March earlier this year, would reduce the rate of the call from the landline phone to the cellphone to around Rs 2.50 per minute. The TRAI's original tariff plan had stated that of this charge, 85 per cent would go to the cellphone operator and 15 per cent would be retained by the landline phone owner -- DoT/MTNL/private basic services company as the case may be.

``This is an area of debate even within the TRAI,'' says a source. With two companies in Calcutta -- Usha Martin and Modi Telstra -- already launching zero charges forincoming calls, without demanding their 85 per cent share from the DoT on these calls, there may be pressure on the TRAI to leave this untouched.